Gentlemen and gentlewomen vs. Trump
One of the things that often strikes me is that Trump is no gentleman.
Oh, he can be a gentleman. When he wants to, he can act as graciously as anyone and exhibit excellent manners. But that’s not his usual mode, particularly with people in US politics whom he disdains or considers to be outright enemies or rivals.
Other presidents have behaved that way, too – in private. LBJ comes immediately to mind, as well as Nixon. In fact, it may be somewhat true of all presidents. But they have generally been careful – at least, the ones who have been president during my lifetime – not to display that particular side of themselves to the public at large (although Obama exhibited it once or twice in gestures for the cognoscenti to interpret).
One of the hallmarks of this lack of gentlemanly behavior on the part of the public Trump is his tendency to give people nasty nicknames. Nasty and yet effective, for the most part. These nicknames often involve a level of taunting reminiscent of the schoolyard, the locker room, or the pro wrestling circuit, and involve (among many many other things) insults regarding diminutive size.
That sort of ungentlemanly behavior as well as other examples in that vein drives Trump-haters on the right nearly crazy. The left hates him for that reason, too, but they hate so much else about him that their hatred about his lack of gentlemanliness is mostly because of its effectiveness. If he fought on behalf of their side, they’d love it.
Whereas those on the right who hate Trump for his lack of gentlemanliness hate it because they don’t want his déclassé ways to rub off on them. They don’t care that he has fought for policies and judges they profess to admire. Simply put, they consider him embarrassing riffraff and they don’t want to be tainted by association.
Many Trump supporters like him because he fights. He fights for them and he fights for America. And some of the time he doesn’t fight like a gentleman. That’s the same thing that a lot of Republicans who detest Trump really really really dislike.
I’ve probably written over a hundred posts on the topic of “why they hate Trump.” I may write a great many more. It’s an almost inexhaustible topic, isn’t it?
A lot of what you wrote about Trump could have been written the same about Winston Churchill. Granted, Churchill was far more eloquent. But, he was known as a pugnacious fighter who did not let good manners overly dictate his course.
I don’t think that’s quite it. George W. Bush, after all, wasn’t exactly an exemplar of class and sophistication yet most NeverTrumpers remain quite devoted to Bush the Younger to this very day.
Mike
I’m a Trump hater on the right, and I think your explanation of Trump hatred on the right is most unfair. I’m not afraid Trump’s vulgarity will rub off on me. I look at him as an agent of terrible cultural degradation.Whatever happens in the election, or the impeachment — which I don’t approve of, by the way — I don’t think our society will recover from his influence anytime soon.
I used to be a big fan, Neo. You were my home on the internet. I’ve been so disappointed to see you lose your bearings.
If you are dealing with gentlemen, you behave as a gentleman, if you’re dealing with barbarians you have to be a barbarian too if you want to survive. At least since the Florida recount in 2000, the Democrats have been nothing but lawless savages.
mizpants:
Obviously I am generalizing. You may have different reasons for hating Trump, although you haven’t been clear in your comment (which of course is necessarily rather short) what they might be. But this post represents what I’ve observed among the vast majority of people on the right who hate him, and I’ve done a LOT of observing.
You are welcome to disagree with me. But I assure you I have not lost my bearings. I have explained in almost countless posts exactly why I say what I say and what it is based on.
I can’t spare the man. He fights.
Neo,
Yes, you’re generalizing in a way I recognize from the left, when they ascribe bad motives to people who disagree with them. I notice you didn’t say “some” Trump haters on the right hate him because they fear his vulgarity will rub off on them. Your implication is clearly that you think ALL Trump haters feel that way.
“Your implication is clearly that you think ALL Trump haters feel that way.”
Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I think it’s worthwhile to point out that “We can’t be like the Left” is a big reason why conservatism has been so utterly ineffectual in so many areas of public policy and cultural change.
Mike
You’re worried about his influence? look, this is politics, not boxing with the Marquis de Queensbury’s rules. What did the left say about Bush II? every name in the book. Johnny Mac? the same. Mittens Romney? the same. They were all literally Hitler.
You wanna know how you got Trump? because no other Republican aside from possibly Ted Cruz is/was willing to give as good as they got. Trump’s stolen a page directly from Alinksy
The progs have been using that for a long time. It’s high time we give it back. Good and hard.
George W. Bush, after all, wasn’t exactly an exemplar of class and sophistication … –MBunge
I can’t find it now on the web, but I recall a quote from W. after he lost a Texas election early in his career: “I’ll never get out-bubba-ed again.”
Which is to say, I wonder how much of Bush’s lack of class was his adoption of down-home bubba-ness although born in the Yale hospital to a blue-blood New England family.
Of course, Bush also had a gift for malapropism, which might have been endearing if he weren’t so controversial.
Make the pie higher!
“I’ve been so disappointed to see you lose your bearings.” mizpants
And you accuse Neo of generalizing in the way of the left? Whatever happened to agree to disagree? Not ascribing to your fear that society won’t recover from a Trump presidency, even though as a result, the left has removed every mask of political propriety, warrants removal of Neo from your sphere? My opinion is that hatred hasn’t served you well.
“…ridicule…”
Um, er, oh why not….
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-live-vindman-williams-testify-tuesday-impeachment-doubleheader
I guess Clinton’s polluting the Oval Office and our culture by being fellated by a White House intern who saved her contaminated dress as a trophy, and whose actions were defended by legions of his supporters as nobody’s business, occurred before our culture became degraded. Likewise, the Clarence Thomas hit job hearings. Then of course, there were the numerous public professions on the part of female political activists who claimed they would be pleased to service Obama in the same way. Maybe that coarsening of the public sphere took place after Trump. I’ll have to look it up.
No, Richard Nixon had the right descriptive term for these people, no matter how coarse it seems. For they are that, and they are nothing more; and by my reckoning they predate Trump by some considerable number of years.
I love President Bush, but it sometimes drove me Nuts that he rarely fought back the Haters. Trump is a vast opposite and it sometimes makes me Nuts that he won’t let ANY criticism go unpunished. Good God, Donald, lead us; don’t attempt to squash criticism from some doofus on Tweety at Tennessee State Teacher’s College!!!
I don’t think our society will recover from his influence anytime soon.
I guess you will have no problems recovering from Pelosi’s or Hillary’s influence. I assume that because no one on the right gets their short pants in a wad up their butt as they do with Trump. Losers all.
“….an agent of terrible cultural degradation….I don’t think our society will recover from his influence anytime soon….”
There can be no doubt that many share your heartfelt concern….
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/clinton-foundation-files-168-million-loss
In fact, Trump’s “cultural degradation” has reached up into Canada, where those formerly reserved and quaint—those lovely—people just can’t seem to get over Trump’s coarsening subversion of the North American continent…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7702039/Shocking-moment-mass-fight-erupts-lavish-wedding-brawling-guests-left-covered-blood.html
A real tragedy….
“yet most NeverTrumpers remain quite devoted to Bush the Younger to this very day.
Mike”
and still defend the disastrous war in Iraq
As a Never-Trumper in 2016 I worried, not without cause it still seems to me, that Trump’s big-mouth put-downs and braggadacio indicated a lack of judgment which could be catastrophic if he became President. He could get the nation into terrible trouble and ensure a similar electoral disaster for Republicans as followed Nixon after Watergate.
I remain somewhat mystified. In my experience people who talk like Trump tweets are nothing but trouble. There is more to Trump than meets my eye. I don’t worry about him like I did at first.
I look forward to reading a decent Trump biography in 10-20 years to understand him better.
“You wanna know how you got Trump? because no other Republican aside from possibly Ted Cruz is/was willing to give as good as they got. Trump’s stolen a page directly from Alinksy”
Should we be as bad as them? Id rather lose with dignity than win shamefully.Velleity uber alles!
And Annes panties are my magic underwear
Mittens
The difference is between those people who’ve changed, at least partly, their opinion on Trump, those who, for one reason or another, have found a way to make peace with him being President (such as Lindsey Graham and Erick Erickson) and those who are still pissy about Trump and feel compelled to jump on board every liberal/media smear of him, even at personal and professional expense.
I mean, the Weekly Standard went out of business because they would not stop sticking their finger in the collective eye of Trump and his supporters. That’s a self-destructive compulsion.
Mike
First; I don’t know how anyone can accuse George W. Bush of lacking “class”–whatever they mean by that. True, he was not always the most articulate of politicians; but, I challenge anyone to point to a classless act.
As for Trump. I could not stand him. But, as it came to a choice between Trump and Clinton, I tolerated him. Then, I learned that he actually intended to govern as he campaigned. So, although I sometimes cringe, I can abide his rhetoric. I, for the most part, have attributed his boorishness to being a New Yorker.
On yet another level; I don’t understand people who criticize him for lashing back in a rather crude way at people and organizations who have attacked him–incessantly–in the crudest possible terms. They must be divine.
mizpants is what Kurt Schlichter refers to as part of the pearl-clutching, “Oh well! I never!” crowd
Never-Trumpers think Donald Trump is low-class.
Once upon a time, the British thought we were low-class and boorish, too.
General Washington, a resplendently high-class man, was our leader.
But he knew how to fight.
Americans
Willing to cross a frozen river to kill you.
In your sleep.
On Christmas.
Totally not kidding.
We’ve done it.
I remain fond of Jonah Goldberg, an engaging writer, who was and still is anti-Trump. But I’ve not been able to follow his arguments against Trump for some time. For instance this recent tweet:
The process w/Ken Starr was vastly more secretive, using Grand Juries not closed committee hearings where GOP could ask all the questions the president’s lawyers would. Also hearings are now public. Also, like it or not the president ultimately serves at the pleasure of Congress.
https://twitter.com/JonahDispatch/status/1194364960480137222
“the president ultimately serves at the pleasure of Congress.” What?
For what it’s worth, I still think Trump is an awful man, and I still would have preferred Ted Cruz as President. That’s not incompatible with my support for Trump’s policies and appointments. On that score, he’s gone well beyond my modest hopes.
But it’s clear that progressives, socialists, and the deep state have all degraded the republic to such an extent that any conservative or populist president would have to be a ruthless street-fighter to survive. Trump is that, and look what he’s had to face. A President Romney would have long ago resigned for the supposed good of the country. How would a President Cruz have fared? I think he would have fiercely debated and mocked every attack from the Left, without stooping to Trump’s bullying, insults, and wild exaggerations.
So, I’m a Trump-disliker, but not a Trump-hater, and I certainly don’t worry about getting the cooties from his bad behavior. I respect the way he fights, but I neither like nor respect the man. I’m sure many of his supporters would find that sort of equivocation to be, at best, misguided. But I also suspect that many Trump voters have opinions close to mine. They’re the proverbial strange bedfellows. I just hope that their offspring represents a shift towards small-government conservatism, rather than leftist techno-authoritarianism. One way or another, change is coming. The so-called elites have chosen chaos over a duly elected government. Will they win, or will there be a successful rebellion by the ordinary people they hate so much? As long as Trump serves the anti-elitist rebellion, I’ll happily support him, no matter how much I dislike him.
I don’t think Trump caused the degradation in our culture. I think his public vulgarities, the name-calling, and the braggadocio are downstream from public culture rather than the other way around. Obama was more suave, but do remember the ugly lyrics coming from the rappers and other performance groups he hosted at the White House, and his more private disdain for “bitter clingers.” And do remember Clinton answering questions about his choice of underwear and his subjecting us all to the stained blue dress.
I will let somebody who knows Trump well speak on my behalf. Trump Jr said that his father is a “blue-collar billionaire”. That sums it up very well for me.
As for those who are offended by his behaviour; if it is strictly for political reason then their honestly should be applauded but if they are offended because Trump is in some way unique then they really need to inform themselves. LBJ, to give one example, during his stay in WH dictated several missives whilst sitting on a toilet seat. We also owe him our gratitude for sharing the phrase, chew-gum-and-walk, which was originally stated as “walk and fart at the same time”. As Swalwell showed today, LBJ was right because you didn’t see former walking at that time.
With every Republican president since Coolidge being called a variation of Nazi/Hitler/Fascist and articles of impeachment filed against every elected Republican president since Eisenhower it is difficult to empathize with the “class” argument especially when Obama told us, “if they bring a knife we bring a gun”, “punch back twice as hard” and “get in their face”.
Also, what is “class”? There is a young lady living in the Windsor Castle who now delicately balances her food on the back of a fork. Just a little while ago she was probably chowing down drive-through fast food in US. She is all class all the way now.
Other presidents have behaved that way, too – in private. LBJ comes immediately to mind, as well as Nixon.
so peeing on buildings is in private and not open?
who knew…
then also… if in private, how do WE know?
…..numerous Washington insiders — reporters, officials, cronies — did not reveal their knowledge of Johnson’s ugly side until 1980, when oral biographer Merle Miller coaxed them
and
it was not widely known for years that Johnson had a recording system in the Oval Office. This system, like the more infamous one of Richard Nixon, captured many very regrettable comments, but it would not be definitively described until a 1999 book by historian William Doyle.
how repulsive was Johnson?
Anyone who came into contact with him was at risk of encountering a spectacle of burping, farting, nose-picking and crotch-scratching. Congressman Richard Bolling, who witnessed some of this, told Merle Miller: “I wouldn’t say Johnson was vulgar — he was barnyard.” Worse, Johnson had no sense of personal space and treated conversation as a creepy hands-on affair. Miller learned from Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee that, “You really felt as if a St. Bernard had licked your face for an hour, had pawed you all over.”
Reporter Sam Schaffer toured Johnson’s Texan ranch and was stunned when Johnson urinated right in front of him, in the open.
he was known for folksy aphorisms that were crude, sometimes racist, and often weird, including “it was raining as hard as a cat pissing on a flat rock,” “as straight as an Indian shits,” and the importance of fighting an opponent “till he’s shitty as a bear.”
Bill Theis was told by him that subsequent White House economic policies were “the worst thing that’s happened to this country since pantyhose ruined finger-fucking.”
Biographer Woods learned that Johnson would tell close friends that his own wife, the delightfully named Lady Bird, was “the best piece of ass I ever had” (but he still cheated on her).
ohnson’s own vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, informed Miller that Johnson’s need to control people caused him to say of certain individuals that, “I’ve got his pecker in my pocket.”
Robert A. Caro says he referred to the manual labour of his youth as “ni**er work.”
“I think I can take every Mexican in the state and every “ni**er in the state.”
and a speech is private, right?
“All they (the voters) ever hear at election time is n—-r, n—-r, n—-r!” Woods discovered that somebody sanitized the official record of the speech, substituting the word “Negro,” but witnesses confirmed what was really said.
concerning possible black candidates for the Supreme Court. Johnson stressed he would consider only high-profile people: “When I appoint a n—-r to the bench, I want everyone to know he’s a n—-r.”
at least this WAS private
he confided to aide Joseph Califano his fear that “Negroes will end up pissing in the aisles of the Senate.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=–=
once again.. IF people knew history in DETAIL, they would not assert a position based on the absence of information!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! which is basically making up stuff to fill the holes…
giving sanitized records i will quote the sanitized version
“Nuts”
When President Obama called Mitt Romney a “bullshitter” in the pages of Rolling Stone earlier this year, it set off a brief firestorm. Defenders of the Republican candidate were shocked – shocked! – that the man holding the highest office in the land would resort to such language. In truth, the halls of the White House (like nearly every other house in the country, with the apparent exception of Romney’s) have heard no shortage of profanity over the decades. It’s a dirty job, leading the free world. Sometimes it takes a few dirty words.
“There is nothing to make an Englishman shit quicker than the sight of General George Washington.” Abraham Lincoln
and
“You know that guy ain’t shit. Sorry-ass motherfucker ain’t got nothing on me.” Obama (quoting Richard Pryor) in his audio book…
“This is a big fucking deal,” said Biden.
Vice President Cheney reportedly told Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy to “go fuck [himself]”
Bush called Clymer a “major-league asshole.”
When Obama beat Hillary Clinton in South Carolina’s Democratic primary in 2008, the former president compared the victory to Jesse Jackson’s primary wins back in the Eighties. The Obama campaign hinted that the analogy was racially tinged, and Clinton shot back: “I don’t think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?”
“People said my language was bad,” recalled Nixon, “but Jesus, you should have heard LBJ.” “I do know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad” Lyndon Baines Johnson
JFK could swear like a sailor (which he was, of course) away from the microphone – “This is obviously a fuck-up,” he fumed to a hapless general over the phone
General Douglas MacArthur was a “dumb son of a bitch,” and Nixon was “a shifty-eyed goddamned liar.”
Later we can get into the democrat president who raped a woman, made her pregnant, stole her baby and put it up for adoption, and had her commited for years to a mental ward to hide it..
[and we havent even gotten to people who werent president or vice president… except if you want to go back to Sam Adams and Jefferson who said things that todays kids would flip over and have airs… ]
Later we can get into the democrat president who raped a woman, made her pregnant, stole her baby and put it up for adoption, and had her commited for years to a mental ward to hide it..
who?
I don’t think that’s quite it. George W. Bush, after all, wasn’t exactly an exemplar of class and sophistication
Prescott Bush was a satisfactory public speaker, George Bush the elder was terrible, and George Bush the Younger was in his talents somewhere between father and grandfather. In their avocations, father and son were normal=range country-club types. Bush the Younger was more of a bibliophile than his father, though tended to stick to history volumes. (Neither one AFAIK were season-ticket holders to their local philharmonic or symphony, nor given to reading philosophical or sociological works).
Neo, I do not hate Trump for his behavior however I really don’t like it either. I do like what he has done for the economy and I approve of his judicial appointments so it’s not either/or as you say. I would not choose to get in his lifeboat or to spend time in his company. He strikes me as boorish and narcissistic yet he is our president. Some day the Democrats will have their Trump. What then will those on the Trump Train say?
NeverTrumpers (Jonah Goldberg, Matt K Lewis) and Vichy evangelicals (John Fea) have made much of the President’s character and personality defects. In assessing the dispositions of conservative voters, they’ve been playing dumb or it’s not an act. Evangelicals and conservative Catholics make satisficing decisions among available alternatives. The most charitable assessment of Fea, Lewis, et al is that their vocational life consists of striking poses and they fancy everyone else has the same habits of mind. Well, they don’t.
I’d be pleased if blatant adulterers weren’t in prominent positions (and recall that as recently as 1987 Gary Hart (who is still married to Oletha Ludwig) was rendered a laughing-stock over his dalliances), but that hasn’t been so in more than 25 years. I’d also be pleased if people who refuse to enforce duly enacted laws were run out of public life, but they’re there and the NeverTrumpers don’t appear to be bothered by it.
A lot of what you wrote about Trump could have been written the same about Winston Churchill.
That’s overstating it quite a bit. Churchill was a brilliant man. He served in the military and fought in many wars. He even re-enlisted for WW1 after he was 40. He escaped a prison in South Africa and came back on horseback to route the enemy. He also was a politician for over 50 years. Not to mention he was extremely well read and wrote terrific books. Churchill will be remembered more for his actions than his attitude. Trump [so far] will only be remembered for his tweets and attitude.
A “blue-collar billionaire”
That is pure advertising on the part of Don Jr. Trump may appeal to some blue collar workers because he shoots from the hip with opinions and doesn’t sound like a politician. Fine. But he is not blue collar.
I’ve heard some compare Trump to Lincoln. Dinesh Joseph D’Souza and Jon Voight come to mind. It’s odd. But one thing seems true and it is that some people really, really like Trump and feel very loyal to him beyond what I think is reasonable. And, of course, some people really, really hate him to the point they won’t give an inch. Is this good or bad? I don’t know? What matters is what happens under a president’s leadership. His judician appointments will definitely make a difference. I guess we’ll be debating this a lot. Unless he loses next year and if he does the GOP and the pundits who support him will drop their love for him like a hot potato. If he wins the left will go bananas. And the only question will be can a president be impeached twice…?
“Some day the Democrats will have their Trump. What then will those on the Trump Train say?”
Uh…the Democrats already had their Trump. His name was Bill Clinton and he sexually exploited an intern young enough to be his daughter, lied to the entire country about it for most of a year, used every power of his office to obstruct the investigation into his immorality, and after that was accused of being a rapist with the accusation being credible enough for NBC News to put it on the air. And he got away with all of it to become disgustingly wealthy and receive standing ovations at every Democratic National Convention for the last 20 years.
A lot of the support from Donald Trump is in reaction to that.
Mike
Grain of salt alert (unconfirmed so far)
Top FBI officials arranged the interview with the victim, who said he was raped by Bill Clinton when he was just eight years old. The interview was conducted by the FBI’s task force that was established to investigate sexual assault and sex trafficking claims linked to Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. That task force, also attached to the NYPD, remains active even though Epstein reportedly committed suicide in federal custody just weeks ago.
[snip]
Moore, an advocate who investigated abused and trafficked children, had been in the process of investigating allegations by the 26-year-old man that — as a young boy — he was sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and pimped out at private sex parties attended by other D.C. elites.
But Moore and the traumatized victim wanted to contact Homeland Security and the FBI first to see if they would open a criminal case against Clinton prior to publicizing the claims.
Four weeks after contacting the Feds, Jen Moore was found dead in a D.C. hotel room. Moore died of an apparent seizure, though her death remains suspicious and the timing — beyond disturbing. After Moore’s death, the victim, fearful for his own life, decided to not go public with that interview.
[snip]
While in New York City, the victim supplied intelligence to federal agents including confirmation that he witnessed other children and people being sexually and physically abused and worse on numerous “boat parties.” These parties were attended by elite members of D.C. political class, according to the victim.
Video testimony:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7o6qbj
The process w/Ken Starr was vastly more secretive, using Grand Juries not closed committee hearings where GOP could ask all the questions the president’s lawyers would. Also hearings are now public.
Starr’s report was supplemented with public hearings in front of the House Judiciary Committee. In re Watergate, the Judiciary Committee held six months worth of public hearings in 1974, which followed on months of public hearings held by the Senate Select Committee on Watergate in 1973.
And the Starr analogy is asinine. The independent counsel’s office was erected in January of 1994 to investigate the Whitewater matter, which included the conduct of a mess of people (both Clintons, both McDougals, Webb Hubbell, David Hale, and Jim Guy Tucker, among others). It was fairly late in the day the mandate of the office was broadened to include the President’s conduct in regard to grand jury testimony and civil depositions. The office (unlike Mueller’s) had a discrete and publicly delineated commission.
I don’t think Trump caused the degradation in our culture. I think his public vulgarities, the name-calling, and the braggadocio are downstream from public culture rather than the other way around.
Kate: I agree. One may regret that Trump is contributing to that degradation, but as Billy Joel once sang:
“We Didn’t Start the Fire”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
Who is this mizpantz who is now claiming that “Trump is degrading the culture”?
Trump was elected because he fights, to WIN, and Rep voters were tired, very very tired, of losing.
And he wins because he fights smart, like Butch Cassidy in the famous knife fight scene:
Butch: First we gotta get the rules straight,
Big Guy: There ain’t no rules in knife ughhh…
as Butch kicks him in the crotch.
Violating … “no rules”.
From being a NeverHillary voter certain to vote for the Rep, wanting Carly, then Ted, then Trump OK – now I’m a full-on Trump supporter.
Like DNW said:
progressives, socialists, and the deep state have all degraded the republic to such an extent that any conservative or populist president would have to be a ruthless street-fighter to survive. Trump is that, and look what he’s had to face.
Who called Palin a c**t on TV? No firing.
Who called Ivanka Trump a c**t on TV? No firing.
Who reported the Fake News about Bush and the National Guard? Dan Rather. Fired. Then. Since then, rehired.
How many colleges have been sued, and lost, for their own little kangaroo courts of sexual assault accusations? Like the Rolling Stone gang rape hoax?
Trump is WINNING, for conservatives, for conservative policies, for religious freedom, in an increasing anti-American, anti-Free Speech, anti-Religious Freedom culture dominated by often incompetent elites with too much power.
Ever since the US SC decided on the non-constitutional Roe v Wade amendment to allow women to kill their unborn babies, the “culture of life”, and true freedom, has been degraded and the degradations have been getting progressively worse; literally progressively worse.
It’s not at all clear that even with Trump winning in 2020 will the culture recover. Even those of us on the conservative side who agree on being anti-PC, don’t agree on what parts of culture to support. But at least with Trump getting conservatives on the bench, we can hope for less elite judges doing the prog legislating that Dems fail to actually do in legislative bills in Congress.
Winning isn’t everything, nor the only thing, at least not most of the time. The 50s, 60s, 70s US culture is already lost in many ways. We’re not yet in Lifeboat ethics, altho degraded global warming alarmists want to claim we are. But we are in, yet another, Flight 93 election — the elites want to ram the airplane and destroy something American.
I support America First — for America; and EU first, for the EU; and Slovakia first, for Slovakia. But all within limits of US-led “Universal Human Rights”, especially Free Speech and Freedom of Religion.
True rights that all governments can afford to give to all people, because they don’t cost anything. Many other “rights”, like housing, heathcare; even food, may require some other people to do something. These should be more correctly called “civil benefits” from the particular civilization.
Trump is fighting for Free Speech, including insulting speech. TrumpHaters, including Rep NeverTrumpers, are essentially on the side against Free Speech.
As some others have said I count this public “moral decline”having it s genesis from the Clinton era. Car pooling moms complained about car radio reports that had their 6th graders asking ” mom what’s oral sex” ? James Carville defending them by calling Clinton’s critics the ” kind of people who ll chase a dollar dragged through a trailer park.”
So no this situation did not start with Trump and won t end when he s gone. It s the new normal.
Kathy Griffin tweeting a fake bloody decapitated Trump head then complaining about her secret service visit. Or other adult
Lefties who want to deliver knock out punches to MAGA hat wearing minors. There is plenty of vile behavior to go around & probably more to come.
As I see it, the the lack of gentle-person-liness which concerns NeverTrumpers reflects the old-fashioned Republican wisdom that Republican politicians can’t get away with as much as Democrats, so they better walk a straighter line.
Which I think was valid until recently. Rather like the old-fashioned parental advice not to get tattoos.
Would Reagan have been elected in 1980 had he behaved as Trump in 2016? I doubt it.
(Another aspect of NeverTrumpism IMO is that Republicans yearn for another Reagan almost as much as Democrats for a JFK.)
But the times change and the stakes change and here we are.
I do find it interesting that no other politician can pull off Trump’s moves…yet. They end up looking silly or shrill.
Artfldgr, “it was raining as hard as a cat pissing on a flat rock,”
You mixed your barnyard sayings. It is either “It’s raining cats and dogs” or “It’s raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock.” None of this “It’s a piece of pie” or “It’s as easy as cake” stuff. (kidding)
_____
Speaking of classy and crude and LBJ, people with access to Netflix might want to check out “The Crown” Season 3, Ep. 2 called “Margaretology” after Princess Margaret.
The socialist gov. (Wilson admin.) in the UK ran out of other people’s money and so wanted to borrow a huge chunk of US taxpayer money. LBJ was pissed at the lack UK support for Vietnam and said no. The Queen invited LBJ to Balmoral for some bird hunting (a first) and he refused, and further refused to invite the Queen to the Whitehouse.
Princess Margaret happened to be touring the US with her husband and got an invite to the Whitehouse instead. The Queen strongly advised her notoriously brash sister Margaret about the gravity of the situation and urged her to mind every P and Q. I won’t spoil the story by continuing. Watch it. Helena Bonham Carter does a great job as Margaret.
Who is this mizpantz who is now claiming that “Trump is degrading the culture”?
Tom Grey: I remember her from the 2000s. I liked her. She was, and I imagine still is, a good person. I suggest some understanding.
“Id rather lose with dignity than win shamefully.” – avi
That’s a nice thing to say when you’re talking about a friendly baseball game or a dance off.
The future of our country is at stake. I’d rather win. And frankly I don’t care how.
Look, Trump is a boor. I wouldn’t invite him over to my house for dinner. Would I rather have a President who is a class act that I can respect on a personal level? Of course!
But if I have to choose between a jerk, but otherwise effective President who does things I like, and a class act who is bent on ruining American freedom and principles, I’ll take the jerk every time.
He strikes me as boorish and narcissistic yet he is our president. Some day the Democrats will have their Trump. What then will those on the Trump Train say?
Are you for real? John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton had an army of skeletons in their respective closets. Doesn’t bother latter-day Democrats at all. Trump puts up less of a front than these characters and has a hostile press. That’s a difference in circumstances, not a difference in character.
One of the amusing aspects of this is that partisan Democrats hardly notice that their line-up of competitive presidential candidates in recent decades has included two bona fide draft dodgers (Bill Clinton and Bernie Sanders. men who scammed around to receive rare and personally-specific relief from military service obligations) and one or two others (Bill Bradley, Howard Dean[?]) with odd lacunae in his Selective Service history. They’ve had three others (Jerry Brown, Gary Hart, Joseph Biden) who received so many years worth of student deferments that they aged out of eligibility while in school. They go on to amuse themselves with look-squirrel diversions which have included manufacturing fictions about Dan Quayle’s National Guard service, manufacturing more egregious fictions about George W. Bush’s National Guard service, and manufacturing yet more fictions about Trump’s deferments (which were quite ordinary and distributed to hundreds-of-thousands of others born in 1946). Richard Gephardt’s National Guard service was never a problem and received no notice, Michael Dukakis student deferments during the Korean War were never a problem, Jimmy Carter parked in Annapolis during the 2d World War was never a problem, Paul Tsongas in the Peace Corps in lieu of the military was never a problem. Jesse Jackson being excused from military service due to student deferments, a ministerial exception, and dependent children wasn’t a problem. In Richard Cheney’s case it was, because reasons.
They’ve also not only ignored the gross scandals in the Obama administration, but the graft that encompassed both Obamas during their last years in Chicago, graft of a sort which embarrasses the Bidens today. Ask yourself what Michelle did all day during the period running from 1991 to 2008, why she got handsome raises each time her husband took a step up on the political ladder, and why her position was eliminated in a hiring freeze when she vacated it. Ask yourself how many people whose demonstrable skills were summarized in a law license they allowed to lapse a dozen years earlier were paid $300,000 a year in 2005.
The stupendous buckraking the Clintons have engaged in for nearly twenty years has, of course, been discussed at length in public fora.
In truth, partisan Democrats simply ignore the personal history of their objects of admiration. NeverTrump bozos expect us to compare the reality of Trump with fictionalized versions of Democratic candidates.
mizpants:
I actually am polite myself and prefer politicians who are polite and gentlemanly and can use words – and insults, if necessary – with elegant finesse. So I empathize to a certain extent with those who dislike Trump for his failings in that department. But I don’t reject Trump because he doesn’t function that way. And I don’t claim to be on the right and support the left, as so many do, over Trump for reasons that sound trivial. I’ve read countless articles criticizing him from supposed conservatives and so far their concerns almost always seem stylistic, trivial, and/or misguided and mostly boil down to “he’s a boor.”
It is possible to generalize because that’s the general tendency I have observed over time. Observations about trends are always generalizations and are the purview of neither the left nor the right.
Look, Trump is a boor. I wouldn’t invite him over to my house for dinner.
cjbreisch: I get it. However, I must say I would be fascinated to invite Trump over (assuming he would come). I find him a mysterious fellow. I’d love to interact with him one-on-one and see what happens.
Frankly, I am let down that none of the words I read from anyone about Trump before the election prepared me for the reality of President Trump.
To be sure, biases played a big part in that, but I suspect that Trump is quite a chameleon with a much wider range of responses than most people.
See the Instapundit interview with the Federalist
https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/05/glenn-harlan-reynolds-on-social-media-mobs-and-the-last-hope-for-digital-free-speech/
well, if you think Trump’s approach to politics is sort of classless, low-brow, and — I don’t mean in a financial sense — at some level corrupt, that’s because that’s what our politics now is in general. And you may wish we had a better politics, where people were more thoughtful, courteous, and civil, but we in fact do not have that politics.
Near the end it is discussed how social media is reducing the attention span of people — with a little note earlier about how “reading” helped to help people think. By making longer, more complex arguments, and thinking about them.
I need to reconsider my own “infotainment” use / addiction.
But Neo, and her commenters, are so interesting, so often….
Huxley, did you try Don Surber, pro-Trump from 2016 before the election?
Trump the Press
https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Press-Surbers-pundits-Republican-ebook/dp/B01IBSJYTK/ref=pd_sim_351_1/131-9295297-4876405?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B01IBSJYTK&pd_rd_r=f998f9ed-7330-4974-87bc-81486b61d927&pd_rd_w=iZ9xO&pd_rd_wg=8rklC&pf_rd_p=5abf8658-0b5f-405c-b880-a6d1b558d4ea&pf_rd_r=TZWBGBYHA9C29W2EDQQ8&psc=1&refRID=TZWBGBYHA9C29W2EDQQ8
I need to reconsider my own “infotainment” use / addiction.
Tom Grey: Didja hear about the last fad from Silicon Valley: dopamine fasting.
“Silicon Valley is obsessed with ‘dopamine fasting’ to stay sane.”
https://www.insider.com/what-is-dopamine-fasting-according-to-neuroscientist-2019-11
Hmm…
Huxley, did you try Don Surber, pro-Trump from 2016 before the election?
Tom Grey: Then I read Surber occasionally, but didn’t notice his pro-Trump stand until after.
I’m not a big Trump fan, but the idea that he has played any big part in degrading our culture is sort of ludicrous. And there’s a certain malicious pleasure in hearing that from progressive who have been telling us for decades that we should applaud every “transgressive” artist.
I still would have preferred Ted Cruz as President.
Ted Cruz was not a natural born citizen. Period.
Natural born citizen means both parents are U.S. citizens at the time of birth. Why is it so hard to understand this?
we in fact do not have that politics.
Learn U.S. history FCOL; we never — never — had that kind of history.
Natural born citizen means both parents are U.S. citizens at the time of birth. Why is it so hard to understand this?
It doesn’t mean that, except to tricorn hats for whom there are gaps in their ignorance.
I’m a Trump hater on the right, and I think your explanation of Trump hatred on the right is most unfair. I’m not afraid Trump’s vulgarity will rub off on me. I look at him as an agent of terrible cultural degradation.Whatever happens in the election, or the impeachment — which I don’t approve of, by the way — I don’t think our society will recover from his influence anytime soon.
We have mass importation of foreigners in defiance of law but in the service of political warfare, constant lawfare against dissidents in this country, a constitutional jurisprudence which consists of one fraud after another, higher education in the hands of meretricious humbugs, religious congregations in the hands of mediocre people who aspire to be den-mothers-on-salary, a media staffed with people who have no integrity of any kind, and one of our major political parties so deep in corruption that it’s a reasonable wager that only a refoundation, not a reform, would ever cure it. And you’re fussing over Trump. Begone with you, silly Pecksniff.
Paul in Boston on November 19, 2019 at 2:22 pm said:
If you are dealing with gentlemen, you behave as a gentleman, if you’re dealing with barbarians you have to be a barbarian too if you want to survive. At least since the Florida recount in 2000, the Democrats have been nothing but lawless savages.
* * *
The only multi-game Prisoner’s Dilemma winning strategy is tit-for-tat.
Advice to Democrats: If you don’t want to be faced with barbarians at the voting booth, don’t act like barbarians when the gentlemen win.
I’m not a big Trump fan, but the idea that he has played any big part in degrading our culture is sort of ludicrous. And there’s a certain malicious pleasure in hearing that from progressive who have been telling us for decades that we should applaud every “transgressive” artist.
Bingo.
Advice to Democrats: If you don’t want to be faced with barbarians at the voting booth, don’t act like barbarians when the gentlemen win.
AesopFan: Democrats (or leftists as one prefers) don’t see themselves that way. To the extent they do, they rationalize it as Resistance or some such. The Republicans are always much worse and must be stopped By Any Means Necessary. (Thank you, Malcolm.)
I’m probably not telling you anything.
I’m amused when I see the “Be the change you want to see in the world” bumper sticker quote, attributed to Gandhi but an iffy paraphrase, that I see on obviously progressive cars.
Art Deco
Give me an example of ‘transgressive artists. I know you didn’t make the original comment but I’m curious how artists ‘degraded’ culture? That’s a rather older cultural argument. I don’t think people shock easily any more.
“Give me an example of ‘transgressive artists.”
Uh…Madonna writhing around on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards and then going on to publish a book of pornographic images of herself? Andres Serrano putting a crucifix in a jar of urine? Annie Sprinkle and her “Public Cervix Announcement, in which she invites the audience to “celebrate the female body” by viewing her cervix with a speculum and flashlight?”
Mike
… I’m curious how artists ‘degraded’ culture?
Montage: How about the “Piss Christ” (1987) or the zillions of menstrual blood art works such as (2010):
“Artist Paints Canvases With Her Own Menstrual Blood”
https://jezebel.com/artist-paints-canvases-with-her-own-menstrual-blood-5590501
That normal people don’t riot or ruin the so-called artists’ lives or horsewhip them through the streets doesn’t mean the culture is not being degraded.
I once believed that art was a grand enterprise carrying the torch of Western Civilization, and I would argue it once did to a modest extent, but now it’s a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Gramscian March, and my life is the poorer for it.
“Give me an example of ‘transgressive artists.”
Look up “Piss Christ”, that was quite transgressive in its day and caused a national uproar. The equivalent today would be an installation with Obama wearing a bow tie, eating a watermelon, and stuck head down in a bucket of s***.
Another widely read blogger labels this sort of argument “civility bullshit”. There is nothing at all offensive about Trump’s manner of communicating, he simply gives as good as he gets, which his critics then try to use against him. And he does not degrade our culture; if it is degraded, from what starting point I’m not sure, that has been an evolutionary process that dates back to, idk, Elvis Presley? The Flappers of the 1920’s? Jazz music? Prohibition?
This whining and kvetching about the erosion of the culture is unbecoming and immature. Do you behave and treat people differently, more confrontationally and crassly, as a result of Trump as POTUS? I didn’t think so.
There is nothing at all offensive about Trump’s manner of communicating, he simply gives as good as he gets, which his critics then try to use against him.
Steve Walsh: We can argue about offensiveness, but Trump does represent a new level of, let us say, public expressiveness from POTUS.
As neo said above, “Other presidents have behaved that way, too – in private.”
I guess I just realized this blog is populated by people over 50 or 60? Would that be correct?
Piss Christ
What progressives have told us to praise this? One artist from 1987 made something controversial that maybe 5% of the population liked. [Actually it didn’t get known until the 90’s] I was in fairly progressive circles in the early 90’s and I can tell you conservatives talked more about this than liberals did. So if anything it did the opposite of being transgressive. People reacted against it.
Madonna
Madonna? Come on guys this isn’t the 1950’s. Does anyone actually care about someone posing nude anymore? Anyone see who Trump is married too or who he had affairs with? Madonna in no way degraded culture. She’s known more for her songs. And frankly her sexuality is only threatening to some conservatives because she flaunts it. That stopped being an issue to conservatives in the 1990’s. The book sold out in a day and few people saw the images… or cared.
Menstrual art
I’m not sure why this is offensive when real blood from violence is spilled all the time. But it pretty much falls into the Piss Christ category. Few people like it or care.
Traditional arts are flourishing today. I go to art shows and trust me there is not that much controversy any more. Partly because the left now muzzles sex in the way the right once did. We’re entering a new Victorian era.
BTW, glad someone didn’t mention DH Lawrence. In is day he was controversial. ; ^ )
No way I’d count “Hey Hey Ho Ho, Western Civ has got to go!” as a degradation. No way. I mean look, it rhymes.
The honey badger is the product of the harsh African environment.
Trump is the political equivalent.
Abuse the decent Tea Party, and get what you deserve.
——–////——–
The true hero is not the pacifist who refrains from all struggle.
Nor is it the one who risks death, by the rules.
The true hero risks his very soul, in the grey area, to do what is required.
But it pretty much falls into the Piss Christ category. Few people like it or care.
Montage: Apparently not to you, but 1987 is not ancient history and it still matters to me and many others. And that trend continues.
No, there is not much controversy in art shows any more because there is not much happening. More piss christs, more menstrual blood, more weirdo installations, more eco-feminist-black crap. No one is surprised on either/any side.
Name some art from 2000 which people still talk about like they once spoke of Monet’s waterlilies or Picasso’s cubism or Jackson Pollock’s drips paintings.
Damn little beauty and my bet is nothing which will survive into the next century.
See Robert Hughes “The Shock of the New” 1 and 2.
Hey huxley, how about the art of that fella who sells paintings for huge sums at auction which then self-destruct right in front of the people bidding? Now that’s some serious art right there.
Come on Montage, give it up.
I guess it was 2.5 years ago, I visited the Whitney museum in NYC. Something like half a floor was dedicated to an exhibit that amounted to worship of the mass murdering French Jacobins. The topic was old history, but the exhibit was then new.
And what was actually in the exhibit? Most of it was just stylish printed excerpts from the Jacobins with some printed commentary. Oh yeah, and a few magazine quality photo clippings of something … exemplars of poverty or inequality perhaps.
I could grant you that this was not offensive, but actually I was offended, a little. We all get inured to this crap, but taking an extremely immoral political movement and framing it as some kind of higher morality is offensive. And I was slightly offended by the extreme economic ignorance it embodied. Mostly, I was offended that precious elite museum space was wasted on something that didn’t remotely qualify for even the lowest art museum. We could have gone to the MoMA or the Frick instead.
huxley
There is so much beautiful art being made today that I cannot keep up with it. Seriously, I don’t know if you get out to galleries or just pick up an art magazine but there is a plethora of terrific and beautiful art that is being created today. The only reason many of us hear about controversial art is – well – because it’s controversial and therefore gets the headlines. So I will grant you some of that stuff will not survive long. But that is but a small percentage of art being made every day in every category from illustrations to paintings to sculpture to jewelry and photography. And btw eco-feminist-black art is just one type of art out there. Very easy to ignore.
sdferr: That’s Banksy.
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/banksy-painting-questions-intl/
It’s a genius stunt, genius, but still a stunt and to my mind further evidence, were it needed, of the bankruptcy (and degradation!) of modern art.
Robert Hughes, an art critic who hardly shied away from modern art but upheld it as I once did, was also deeply disillusioned by post-sixties art. Close to the end of his life he re-examined modern art in his series “The New Shock of the New” (sequel to “The Shock of the New”) in which he presented some seedlings of new art which he hoped could lead to a renewal in real art.
Here’s a Hughes’ excerpt on David Hockney, who had been quite a trendy pop figure (the iconic painting, “A Bigger Splash” (1967)), but as he aged turned to older aesthetics and represented that renewal to Hughes:
“The New Shock of the New: David Hockney on What’s Unphotographable”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDTEejaDC1M
Only five minutes long and quite worth it.
Montage: I stopped going to museums for new art 10 years ago. I still keep tabs from a distance. Frankly I don’t trust your account.
What “plethora of terrific and beautiful art that is being created today” do you see out there? The internet is a wonderful thing for linking images. Link three.
Unless someone else remembers Mizpants (I don’t), I would be willing to declare it. She(?) shows all the signs of being a concern troll.
Roy Nathanson: mizpants isn’t a concern troll, aside from being genuinely concerned.
Trump is tough. People draw lines in different places. She draws hers differently from most people here.
Hi mizpants!
huxley
Oh gosh I could provide links all day.
Here are five:
http://www.jamesjean.com/
http://www.ewanclayton.co.uk/calligraphy.html
http://www.christyleerogers.com/collections-1 [might contain some nudity but not explicit]
http://www.miriamescofet.com/
https://zoeyfrank.com/
Montage: The calligraphy didn’t do much for me, but otherwise not bad. Perhaps Robert Hughes’ hopes are arriving sooner than I expected. I’ll take a closer look.
Thanks for the links.
My last big art museum experience was at SF MOMA. I think it cost $30 admission and all I remember of the new stuff was a floor grid with lots of spheres the size of tennis balls on it and a series showing white cats and a spooky woman staring at you.
The world is a nasty place. It always has been. Spend enough time reading history and you’ll figure that out.
And when most people travel they only go to tourist safe sites. Even here in America. When people visit Chicago they don’t go to the South Side or the West Side.
So we now have a President who is nasty to his opponents. This reflects real life. The never-Trumper snowflakes who are ‘offended’ by his actions are reacting in a very childish manner.
huxley
Most museums are interested in what’s new and political and controversial. So they turn away from more traditional artists. But galleries don’t because they have to sell art. So while I applaud museums for being cutting edge I don’t necessarily always enjoy the selections. I’m less interested in what’s relevant and more interested in what’s good. I think many feel the same way.
So maybe this explains the genuine neverTrumpers – not the George Wills of the world but folks like mizpants. Maybe they think of conservatism as essentially a lost cause. Maybe they think of it as that last bit of shelter from the vulgarity and crassness that is destined to seep into every part of our lives. And even though politicians like Bob Dole, Bush 1 and 2 eventually failed, they maintained a standard of behavior that heartened mizpants. Switching metaphors, even though we are destined to go down with the ship we will do so as gentlemen and gentleladies. And here comes Trump. He thinks he can save the ship. He’s a fool for thinking so and we are fools for supporting him. Not only will the ship sink anyway but we will have been reduced to behaving just like the Democrats – we won’t even have the comfort of believing that we are not like them.
Hi Huxley!
And thank you, Eva Marie, for saying what I meant to say.
Sorry, Montage, but if you aren’t aware that “the transgressive” has been something to be applauded in arts/intellectual circles–not just visual arts–for many years, that’s on you. That use of the term goes back into the ’80s, anyway, and the idea/attitude much further, all the way back to “Épater la bourgeoisie”. Now that you mention it, I don’t hear it as much as I used to, so maybe they’ve gotten bored with it, but it was definitely, as they say, “a thing.” A big thing.
And they so loved lecturing conservatives, Christians, et.al., about how art is supposed to disturb, shock, etc. So it’s ever so amusing to see the same sorts freak out when someone transgresses against something they hold dear.
Which makes me wonder: is Trump really a brilliant performance artist?
But Mizpants and Eva…..what if he does end up saving the ship? It looks like the facts are actually on his side and not on his accusers side. He might be the disrupter but what if??? The standard for speaking was thrown out by dems a long time ago. What if?!?!?! Have you actually listened to what Schiff has been pedaling? Have your heard Nunes rebuttals? He has to tear down lots of things that we have all believed in…it hurts but I want him to keep tearing it down. It is the only way forward.
Most museums are interested in what’s new and political and controversial. So they turn away from more traditional artists. But galleries don’t because they have to sell art
Montage: I missed that distinction the first time. For me it weakens your argument.
I don’t mean to disparage gallery art, but it means that the good ship Art is still being steered by the avant-zombie-woke crowd. That’s what’s being taught in the universities. That’s what’s being discussed by critics. That’s what’s being put into museums. Transgressive art is typical, not ignored.
r considers to be outright enemies or rivals.
Like Ted Cruz, Cruz’s father, Mitt Romney Mormon, and so on.
America First, everybody else last.
The problem with America First is over in Ukraine. The world is not exactly pleased with the American First logo because their experience with America being First, is that they are the First ones to stomp over the face and pride of the local weaker nations. Just like in Ukraine. Hi Biden!
One of the hallmarks of this lack of gentlemanly behavior on the part of the public Trump is his tendency to give people nasty nicknames. Nasty and yet effective, for the most part. These nickname often involve a level of taunting reminiscent of the schoolyard, the locker room, or the pro wrestling circuit, and involve (among many many other things) insults regarding diminutive size.
That sort of ungentlemanly behavior as well as other examples in that vein drives Trump-haters on the right nearly crazy. The left hates him for that reason, too, but they hate so much else about him that their hatred about his lack of gentlemanliness is mostly because of its effectiveness. If he fought on behalf of their side, they’d love it.
Trum’s supporters got triggered by me using Trum and kept calling it a mispelling. It was actually just a nickname, a shortened version. But many saw it as an insult, because that’s how Trum or his supporters would have used it as. SO much for America First free speech.
First amongst equals, everybody else last in speech.
It’s something interesting when I see people get triggered over nicknames, given how much they love nicknames from Trum. It’s a kind of mental psychosis and splitting, or what psychologists call projection/displacement.
It’s an almost inexhaustible topic, isn’t it?
As inexhaustible as the topics you don’t want to cover, nor would you allow anyone else to even bring up in open debate.
As long as Trump serves the anti-elitist rebellion, I’ll happily support him, no matter how much I dislike him.
Maybe I’ll consider some support his way when he becomes President and puts Hillary Rodham Wicked Witch of the West into prison. BEFORE she dies and ends up Epsteined that is.
Of couse ,Trum has to wait for the Alliance to allow him to put any Deep Staters into jail, as Trum has his own bosses to worry about.
No Yammer “we” just figured you were being a juvenile pr*ck seeking attention. And that has proved to be the case.
ArmyMom, I am a Trump supporter and I agree with you. But I try to understand the genuine neverTrumpers as well.
Which makes me wonder: is Trump really a brilliant performance artist?
Mac: I’m convinced Trump is a brilliant something we haven’t seen before. It’s something like a performance artist.
But he’s also solid at the basics. There are so many ways he could have gone wrong, however artful his disquieting PR is. Instead the economy is humming in a way that benefits most Americans. The stock market is at record highs. Our enemies — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — are confused and backing off. The Supreme Court is returning to the Constitution mostly.
Plus he’s taken on a nasty, non-stop, full-court press from Democrats and the media to neutralize him and force him out of office By Any Means Necessary. Which means Trump is cleaner than I expected and downright shrewd, however disquieting his artful PR is.
He’s for the history books.
Here’s a lovingly assembled, “historically accurate” video of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p3DzUwxI0o
Joel got the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a 21-year-old friend of Sean Lennon who said “It’s a terrible time to be 21!” Joel replied to him, “Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y’know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful.” The friend replied, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties”. Joel retorted, “Wait a minute, didn’t you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn't_Start_the_Fire
By which I mean, Trump didn’t start the fire either. Where we go from here, I don’t know.
There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.
–“Terminator 2”
Eva Marie:
If this ship sinks, it won’t make any difference how we behaved, because history will not remember who we were. If we manage to keep it afloat, we will be the ones to write that history.
fwiw, (not much), I agree wholeheartedly with those who classify Pres Trump as a force of Nature. And as a reaction to the historical tides of our time.
As long as he is opposed without understanding, that opposition will generate “moar Trump”.
And so we will continue until the force of Nature is conciliated or until blood flows.
What fascinates me most about unrelenting contempt for Trump is how ego-based it is. They thought Reagan and George W. Bush were stupid but it’s a whole ‘ other level with Trump. He’s a clown, a buffoon, an idiot. Endlessly incompetent. Endlessly foolish. Endlessly inferior.
Yet before Trump even became President, he’d accomplished more in life than 95% of his critics put together. And then he went from being humiliated by Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner to replacing Obama in the White House. I do think there’s a little of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” at work where lesser men cannot stand a greater man reminding them of how much lesser they are.
Which isn’t to put Trump at the level of Caesar or other truly great men but to illustrate the difference between someone of actual accomplishment and the mediocrities who seem to dominate the 21st century administrative state.
Mike
Extremely important post from Powerline:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/11/senator-johnsons-letter.php
NB: “our policy”
File under: “Our Crowd”
PS: I would tend to leave the freakin’ artists alone (they’re artists) and focus on the sheer, inveterate and sick-verging-on-psychotic Hypocrisy (if anyone was wondering what the “H” in Hillary’s campaign logo really stood for) of the Democratic Party, its loathsome, lying inquisitors and executioners and its cheering MSM peanut gallery.
You say you’re on the Right but you hate Trump? He’s too rude and crude? Stains the dignity of the office?
Then take your a** to Western Europe. Your delicate sensibilities are more suited for a society in terminal decline that doesn’t have the spine anymore to uphold its values, cherish its history and protect the traditions and boons handed down by its hard working, self-sacrificing ancestors.
Trump is for those of us who actually believe America is worth fighting for without restraint, without giving or taking quarter and to the last breath – this time around, against 5th Column neo-maoists who will stop at nothing until this nation is scorched earth, its history, traditions, monuments and achievements all shattered, scattered and forgotten.
I’m going to preface these remarks by saying I’m a Trump supporter. Here’s where I see the difficulty for some neverTrumpers. There are 2 events that define the real Trump for them. The first is Trump’s divorce from his first wife. That divorce was unnecessarily humiliating for Ivana Trump. She had, obviously unwisely, portrayed herself as the much loved spouse (as we portray ourselves as the much loved supporters). She was very publicly discarded for a much younger piece of fluff. Ivana then submitted to some pretty severe plastic surgery in an attempt to . . . prove herself worthy of her former husband – much as we in the Republican Party are remaking ourselves for Trump.
The second event was the destruction of Ted Cruz as a viable presidential candidate. Trump had various nick names for his opponents but nothing like lying Ted. Cruz was the only one who could have opposed him for 2020. It might be said that Trump hobbled the Republican Party so that it had to remain loyal to him.
So that’s another view of Trump and one that I think is shared by some neverTrumpers.
Trump doesn’t fight. Neither do his fans. His fans can’t even stand up, man up, and canvass their own block, never mind their whole neighborhood precinct. Like their Orange Idol, they just belly-ache and name-call.
What’s more, there were 16 other Republican candidates for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination and all of them would have appointed equally conservative, Constitution respecting judges. They would have championed almost all of the policies now associated with Trump–many of them were stumping for those policies long before Trump took his downhill escalator ride.
History, it’s more than just dusty old books written by dead white men.
Trump doesn’t fight. Neither do his fans. His fans can’t even stand up, man up, and canvass their own block, never mind their whole neighborhood precinct. Like their Orange Idol, they just belly-ache and name-call.
Can you show me a piece of evidence that Trump supporters are less likely than Rubio supporters to canvass?
What’s more, there were 16 other Republican candidates for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination and all of them would have appointed equally conservative, Constitution respecting judges. They would have championed almost all of the policies now associated with Trump–many of them were stumping for those policies long before Trump took his downhill escalator ride.
Chuckles. Other than Rick Santorum, not one of them manifested an interest in border security. Marco Rubio lied through his teeth to his constituents in 2012, then co-operated with Chuck Schumer in drafting amnesty legislation.
And, no, Jeb Bush wouldn’t have dug in for Brett Kavanaugh.
The second event was the destruction of Ted Cruz as a viable presidential candidate.
Ted Cruz competed and lost. So do most politicians who seek the nomination. NeverTrumpers don’t have a proper complaint arising from that.
Since he was a comparatively young man (45), had minimal executive experience, and had been in Congress for less than three years when he began his campaign, it was rather audacious for him to run. Same deal in re Rubio. (Rubio had satisfactory people skills in legislative bodies which Cruz lacked, but did not have Cruz history in legal practice or his prodigious intelligence. Rubio also had the worst record on border security of any candidate).
Never-Trumpers on the right, God love ’em, remind me of that hilarious “basketball thespians” ad spot from about 10 years ago – I even forget what they were selling – “I’M going back to MY trailer!”
Sorry, no linky; my HTML-fu is weak this morning.
Trump doesn’t fight. Neither do his fans. His fans can’t even stand up, man up, and canvass their own block, never mind their whole neighborhood precinct. Like their Orange Idol, they just belly-ache and name-call.
Unlike you, Sisyphus, we don’t willingly serve a rigged two-party system. But we do vote, and support candidates – parties, not so much.
The GOP enjoys our support, for now, because Trump has demonstrated that he can fight with effect, against the gentlepeople who are members-in-good-standing of Bushwood-on-the-Potomac … something those you serve in that rigged system were not doing, before Trump decided to use their party to get elected.
Swamp creatures have built their careers, their prosperity, their social standing – even their self-esteem – on the idea that they are “more equal than others” because they have all the right appearances of “intellect” … credentials, position, popularity, presentation skills … and a veneer of civility, as long as others accept their way as The One and Only True Way of conventional wisdom.
That is the criteria for members-in-good-standing of Bushwood-on-the-Potomac.
Trump threatens all that, because he expects, demands, and pursues actual results in line with Job One of a legitimate government: securing the liberty and ability to pursue happiness of his fellow citizens. And does so in a way that challenges the worth of mere appearance as a metric of virtue.
That is why they think they must depose him.
I am a Trump supporter.
IMO Trump has done more for America than most. I will vote for him again.
You can say what you will but I say Trump is making great changes. I have always know there has been corruption in politics but it has been and is far worse that I realized.
We know that far too many politicians and government workers are always and only interested in their own well being first before anything else. Now we can begin to see the extent of the corruption. 1. FBI. 2. DOJ. 3. Congress itself. 4. the “professional elites”in the administration in every section of government.
Too many including the elites, members of both parties, socialists, swamp dwellers and the media are showing that they are convinced they are the only ones capable to decide who should get what, when and how. They believe that only they are smart enough to decide what rights the people should have.
Trump has brought shining lights onto these people who are doing their best to take away the rights of every American.
Go Trump!
I think neo is certainly right that much of the hatred of Trump has to do with perceptions of class. One thing this comment thread helps point out is that people have quite a few different ideas of what it means to be classy. Was Obama classy? David Brooks thinks so. I don’t.
I think neo is quite right that many or most of the people who dislike Trump because they see him as declasse’ are essentially worried that it will rub off on them — or that it IS rubbing off on them. They don’t want to be tarred with the same brush. I get this all the time, Leftist friends who want me to reassure them that of course I am a Trump-hater. When I tell them I’m pleasantly surprised and offer to discuss substance, they run screaming.
It seems to me that our whole society, our culture, has become much more focused on style than on substance, to the point that it is disturbing. When a pundit can compliment a candidate on the crease in his trousers and be taken seriously, that tells you something. A leftist friend of mine was telling me, THIS year, how much she loved Obama. I asked why, and every single thing she said was style. Apparently she didn’t pay any attention at all to the things he did.
It seems to me that another big reason people hate Trump so much is that he bursts this bubble. To see only style and ignore substance requires pretense. We allowed Clinton to pretend he wasn’t a predator. We allowed Obama to pretend he had a rational foreign policy. We allowed the people who flew to Epstein’s island to stay under the radar. Etc. Then here comes Trump, bragging that if you’re famous you can get away with whatever you want. I think the people who hate him the most are the people who have been getting away with it. People like Bill Clinton have been able to have it both ways for a very long time. Grab what you want, but keep your reputation intact because that’s the Code of the Celebrity. If you’re powerful, you will be protected; in public, by people who ought to know better — remember the feminists talking about their kneepads?
It’s better in the long run that it’s out in the open. The double standard has fallen apart of its own impossible weight. Time for a new conversation. Substance is more important than style.
True story.
When I was a young pup one of the guys I worked with was being goaded into a fight in a bar.
He wasn’t a scrapper or very big or anything.
But the other guy moved on after my buddy told him “I’ve got no class, I don’t like to fight but when I do I fight dirty. I’ll bite your Goddamn eyebrows off.”
Sondland is not going to say anything that the Dems want, as he has really really good records and is laying it out honestly… oh oh.
Montage on November 19, 2019 at 9:04 pm said: Piss Christ
I wonder what the “progressives” would do if Piss Prophet came out..
Watching some of the “highlights” of the testimony so far from witnesses at this “Impeachment Inquiry” I couldn’t help but notice what a bunch of weasels they are revealing themselves to be.
It seems as if our government needs a very thorough house cleaning.
Montage on November 19, 2019 at 9:30 pm said:
There is so much beautiful art being made today that I cannot keep up with it. Seriously, I don’t know if you get out to galleries or just pick up an art magazine but there is a plethora of terrific and beautiful art that is being created today.
I have some of that… neo wont show any… [for her reasons]
the galleries are not interested as i am not an oppressed person
they dont count that i grew up in a inner city slum and all that uncouth people behave as a norm… [could be quite violent]
Montage @ 9:04pm exhibiting his/her degraded soul (“Madonna? Come on guys this isn’t the 1950’s. Does anyone actually care about someone posing nude anymore? “) … isn’t much of an argument for the thesis that degradation hasn’t happened.
Academic research confirms that overdone political correctness made Trump President
Abstract below
Donald Trump as a Cultural Revolt Against Perceived Communication Restriction: Priming Political Correctness Norms Causes More Trump Support
By Lucian Gideon Conway, Meredith A. Repke, Shannon C. Houck
Abstract
Donald Trump has consistently performed better politically than his negative polling indicators suggested he would. Although there is a tendency to think of Trump support as reflecting ideological conservatism, we argue that part of his support during the election came from a non-ideological source: The preponderant salience of norms restricting communication (Political Correctness – or PC – norms). This perspective suggests that these norms, while successfully reducing the amount of negative communication in the short term, may produce more support for negative communication in the long term. In this framework, support for Donald Trump was in part the result of over-exposure to PC norms. Consistent with this, on a sample of largely politically moderate Americans taken during the General Election in the Fall of 2016, we show that temporarily priming PC norms significantly increased support for Donald Trump (but not Hillary Clinton). We further show that chronic emotional reactance towards restrictive communication norms positively predicted support for Trump (but not Clinton), and that this effect remains significant even when controlling for political ideology. In total, this work provides evidence that norms that are designed to increase the overall amount of positive communication can actually backfire by increasing support for a politician who uses extremely negative language that explicitly violates the norm.
Journal of Social and Political Psychology, Vol 5, No 1 (2017)
https://jspp.psychopen.eu/article/view/732
A lot of people confuse Republican with conservative and they’re not the same at all. Conservatives need to figure out what exactly they’re trying to conserve, and then how to conserve that. Republicans don’t have that problem, they just vote for the person with the R label even if it’s one of an unbroken string of liars.
For 40 years Republicans approved federal tax monies to support Planned Parenthood, while simultaneously claiming they were against it. It is a legacy of cynical, manipulative politics. In 2019 significant defunding occurred – Trump.
Whether it is abortion, immigration, taxation, education, welfare, or the dozens of other political issues neither party has represented middle America, values, needs, or wants. But it is the Republicans who claim they do, while pursuing a very different path.
Trump has been effective. So you have to ask yourself what you want (and what there is) to Conserve.
Trump’s style is not unusual for NY real estate developers and other NY businessmen. Having grown up in NYC, I am less offended by his demeanor than others. His aggressiveness may turn “debate club conservatives” off but it has a lot to do with his negotiation strategy and is why he is so successful. Never Trumpers are more concerned about style over substance. Trump may not fit the mold of a country club conservative, but he has done more for conservative causes than any other president. To paraphrase LBJ (probably our most profane president), Trump many be an SOB, but he is our SOB!
Ukrainian members of parliament have demanded the presidents of Ukraine and the United States, Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, investigate suspicions of the legalization of $7.4 billion by the “family” of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych through the American investment fund Franklin Templeton Investments, which they said has ties to the U.S. Democratic Party. At a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Wednesday, MP Andriy Derkach announced that deputies have received new materials from investigative journalists about international corruption and the participation of Ukrainian officials in it.
“There are 2 events that define the real Trump for them.”
Those are slightly prissy but not unreasonable reasons to be anti-Trump in 2016. They do not explain being anti-Trump in 2019. They don’t explain embracing every liberal media smear aimed at Trump and vigorously defending those lies in the face of conservative pushback. They don’t explain stuff like Jen Rubin praising something when Romney proposed it but trashing the exact same idea when Trump supports it. They don’t explain George Will insisting the GOP needs to be punished for disagreeing with him on Trump. They don’t explain the bizarre spectacle that is Bill Kristol.
Mike
Academic research confirms that overdone political correctness made Trump President
And little prizes like “Trump doesn’t fight. Neither do his fans. His fans can’t even stand up, man up, and canvass their own block, never mind their whole neighborhood precinct. Like their Orange Idol, they just belly-ache and name-call.” act to buttress his support a tad. As my pa used to say, “We’re gonna make you ambassador to a country we wanna to to war with”.
Whereas those on the right who hate Trump for his lack of gentlemanliness hate it because they don’t want his déclassé ways to rub off on them. They don’t care that he has fought for policies and judges they profess to admire. Simply put, they consider him embarrassing riffraff and they don’t want to be tainted by association. –neo
I’m sure neo is correct that Trump’s style is the problem for NeverTrumpers on the right. However, their response to hate Trump and recommend voting Democrat in some cases or even desiring the end of the Republican Party seems out of proportion to the point of irrationality — well beyond embarrassment and a desire not to be tainted.
So even though I was a NeverTrumper in 2016, I can’t say I understand what drives NeverTrumpers today. They seem like people who have been in a bad car accident. When they speak, they can’t explain what happened, just that it was terrible.
Once upon a time (as all good fairytales begin), it may have been about supposedly bad taste, or feeling tainted by association, or uncouth behavior, or no class, or about not being a REAL conservative, or not being well mannered, or decently dressed, or flaunting his wealth, or not having any pretense to being an intellectual, or, or, or, or….
Maybe.
But it’s not about that any more (that is, if it ever was).
Now, it’s about sheer, unadulterated, pure, unfiltered hatred (and really it’s been that for quite a while).
And the current bizarro “situation” is what you get when sheer hatred becomes your main moral imperative.
At the very least, our German “allies(?)” should have been warning us. (“Been there, done that…”, they might have said….)
But hey, just maybe they’re enjoying the show—like most of the rest of Western Europe and their wannabees on the other side of the Atlantic.
Of course it’s Trump who’s the one who’s mentally unfit, clearly unstable, a catastrophe waiting to happen, etc….!
(You know our elites have totally gone off the rails when they’ve entirely lost any and every last vestige of irony….)
” terrible cultural degradation…”
Mizpants: no group in American history has engaged in cultural degradation like the progressive left. Good Lord. It isn’t Trump who is engaged in an effort to erase the biological fact of sex differences. It isn’t Trump who is engaged in an effort to deny young women and girls privacy in locker and bath rooms. It isn’t Trump who is pursuing the fraudulent idea that males can declare themselves to be females and thus, participate in women’s sports. The list of progressive, leftist cultural degradation is endless, but you decry Trump who opposes all of the aforementioned progressive craziness.
“Now, it’s about sheer, unadulterated, pure, unfiltered hatred (and really it’s been that for quite a while).” Barry Meislin
I see it that way too. That’s why I called mizpants on it. Her own words,
“I’m a Trump hater on the right…”
Considering all the positives that are a result of the Trump presidency, despite the raging battle via leftists and the media, not being able to line up with the better for the sake of the “best” is infantile and outside reality. A case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Very foolish indeed.
Just to clarify…
“Mizpants” is no troll. She’s an old and valued commenter here who apparently has been turned off by my benign attitude towards Trump since his presidency.
Trump doesn’t fight? Then how does he keep winning? He’s constantly evaluating threats and adjusting to neutralize them, working at a level that none of us here understand. In simple words, to fight Trump is to lose. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon, and when it happens you won’t be able to find the place where things went wrong, because the battlefield was prepared long before you got there.
Kudos.
I too was instantly reminded of what Lincoln said of Grant.
We’re well into the period of the presidency of the person likely to be listed in the first rank of the historically vital presidents (due in part to him becoming the bulwark against the disintegration and corruption of the old Democrat party).
He fights.
… I have a visceral like of the guy at this point.
All those presidencies I’ve lived through, and only Reagan (and him only in retrospect… the day the Berlin Wall fell, and I realized the Cold War had ended… which put paid to the last of any and all of my remaining tendencies to Democrat liberalism) engenders an emotional response from me.
If we’re to last as a federal republic… it will be directly attributable to this man’s presidency.
He fights.
Damme, but he fights.
A gentleman doesn’t lie, steal or cheat.
He doesn’t slander others.
He doesn’t abuse his position.
He defends the weak. He doesn’t shirk his duty. He fights when necessary.
He is loyal to his friends and allies.
Being a true gentleman is far, far more from a few cursory manners.
On the gentleman scale, Trump sometimes falls short, but he stacks up extremely well when compared to Obama, the Clintons, the Never Trumpers, and the Democrats of the deep state in DC.
Somewhere (in The Magus?) John Fowles writes about the tripartite ideal of a man in England at one point in history: he should be a gentleman, a scholar and a thug.
No word on the relative proportions though.
Stan – nice list.
Trump may not be 100%, but he’s doing better than the Democrats you listed 9an quite a few more).
My favorite definition (source lost in the mists of time):
A gentleman never unwittingly offends another person.
My favorite gentleman: Lord Peter Wimsey.
Who was certainly a scholar, and while not really a thug, was able to do what needed doing.
Aesop,
Lord Peter! Now you’re talkin’. As you probably know, there are those who’ve asserted that Miss Sayers was in love with the man. And why not? I should say. And a lucky duffer he is, too, that Harriet finally said, Placet.
Would you believe that Gaudy Night is my all-time favorite thriller — going on for at least five decades.
I have to ask you, who would be your pick of 20th-century movie stars to play Lord Peter? (I’ve known who it should be for decades, of course. *g*) If you’ll tell, I’ll tell. :>)))
Manju Mongo MBunge Montage
Could you guys please pick more distinctive handles that don’t all blend together when I’m reading quickly? 😀
Mizpants: trump isn’t degrading the culture, he was elected in response to an already degraded culture. How you can look at the mess of things which existed prominently well before trump came down that escalator and blame it on him mystifies me. It would seem to require willful blindness to the existing state of play before that day.
Trump’s stolen a page directly from Alinksy
Both Trum and Alinsky use the same source, Heyl-El and the angels of destruction, for that type of thing. I wouldn’t say Trum stole anything from Alinsky, since Trum already intuitively understood how to break down compassion in order to power infinite intelligence of the indigo chakra, by empowering it with the lower 3 chakras of physical power.
om on November 20, 2019 at 12:22 am said:
No Yammer “we” just figured you were being a juvenile pr*ck seeking attention. And that has proved to be the case.
Remember, Yeshua is love and love is how you will be saved from the Deep State.
Plus he’s taken on a nasty, non-stop, full-court press from Democrats and the media to neutralize him and force him out of office By Any Means Necessary. Which means Trump is cleaner than I expected and downright shrewd, however disquieting his artful PR is.
He’s for the history books.
Those things are not merely his successes. It is a combination of his divine celestial configuration boosting his success as well as his Deep State allies helping him fight the Deep State Cabal. Without the support of the Deep State, Trum would have gotten fired a long time ago by the Federal Reserve, or JFKed. He knows this, even if his supporters do not.
Trump has brought shining lights onto these people who are doing their best to take away the rights of every American.
Unfortunately, Trum’s DS backers are guilty of many of the same war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Gentlemen and gentlewomen vs. Trump biographer Douglas Wead:
Trum is in the same position as Lincoln before he was assassinated.
They have to somehow hold the country together, knowing as he does that there are so many deceptions going on in American history and the media.
“My history of the Jesuits is not eloquently written, but it is supported by unquestionable authorities, [and] is very particular and very horrible. Their [the Jesuit Order’s] restoration [in 1814 by Pope Pius VII] is indeed a step toward darkness, cruelty, despotism, [and] death. … I do not like the appearance of the Jesuits. If ever there was a body of men who merited eternal damnation on earth and in hell, it is this Society of [Ignatius de] Loyola.”
John Adams (1735-1826; 2nd President of the United States)
“Between 1555 and 1931 the Society of Jesus [i.e., the Jesuit Order] was expelled from at least 83 countries, city states and cities, for engaging in political intrigue and subversion plots against the welfare of the State, according to the records of a Jesuit priest of repute [Thomas J. Campbell]. …Practically every instance of expulsion was for political intrigue, political infiltration, political subversion, and inciting to political insurrection.” (1987)
J.E.C. Shepherd (Canadian historian)
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
This [American Civil] war [of 1861-1865] would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to popery that we now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons. Though there were great differences of opinion between the South and the North on the question of slavery, neither Jeff Davis [President of the Confederacy] nor anyone of the leading men of the Confederacy would have dared to attack the North, had they not relied on the promises of the Jesuits, that under the mask of Democracy, the money and arms of the Roman Catholic, even the arms of France, were at their disposal if they would attack us. I pity the priests, the bishops and monks of Rome in the United States, when the people realize that they are, in great part, responsible for the tears and the blood shed in this war. I conceal what I know on that subject from the knowledge of the nation, for if the people knew the whole truth, this war would turn into a religious war, and it would at once take a tenfold more savage and bloody character. It would become merciless as all religious wars are. It would become a war of extermination on both sides.”
— Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865; 16th President of the United States)
“The Jesuits…are a secret society – a sort of Masonic order – with superadded features of revolting odiousness, and a thousand times more dangerous.”
— Samuel Morse (1791-1872; American inventor of the telegraph; author of the book Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States)
“The Jesuits are a MILITARY organization, not a religious order. Their chief is a general of an army, not the mere father abbot of a monastery. And the aim of this organization is power – power in its most despotic exercise – absolute power, universal power, power to control the world by the volition of a single man [i.e., the Black Pope, the Superior General of the Jesuits]. Jesuitism is the most absolute of despotisms [sic] – and at the same time the greatest and most enormous of abuses.”–Napoleon Bonaparte; 1769-1821
The Jesuits…are simply the Romish army for the earthly sovereignty of the world in the future, with the Pontiff of Rome for emperor…that’s their ideal. …It is simple lust of power, of filthy earthly gain, of domination – something like a universal serfdom with them [i.e., the Jesuits] as masters – that’s all they stand for. They don’t even believe in God perhaps.”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881; Russian novelist)
The organization of the [Roman Catholic] Hierarchy is a complete military despotism, of which the Pope is the ostensible [i.e., apparent; seeming] head; but of which, the Black Pope [Ed. Note: The Superior General of the Jesuits], is the real head. The Black Pope is the head of the order of the Jesuits, and is called a General [i.e., the Superior General]. He not only has command of his own order, but [also] directs and controls the general policy of the [Roman Catholic] Church. He [the Black Pope] is the power behind the throne, and is the real potential head of the Hierarchy. The whole machine is under the strictest rules of military discipline. The whole thought and will of this machine, to plan, propose and execute, is found in its head. There is no independence of thought, or of action, in its subordinate parts. Implicit and unquestioning obedience to the orders of superiors in authority, is the sworn duty of the priesthood of every grade…”
— Brigadier General Thomas M. Harris He wrote the book, “Rome’s responsibility for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln” – which exposes the work of the Jesuits
“The presence of the Jesuits in any country, Romanist [i.e., Catholic] or Protestant, is likely to breed social disturbance.”–Lord Palmerston, a British statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century.
Lincoln’s issue was concerning these types of machinations, which he failed to survive. Trum may do better, if only because of his allies. Not all of his allies are from the civil war Alliance Deep State faction. There are many patriots who never had any blood on their hands. And then there are the masses that still think the American Republic is alive and well.
“Trum is in the same position as Lincoln before he was assassinated.”
comedy gold.
A Gentleman faces off against someone who is not a Lady.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/11/20/ben-carson-on-maxine-waters-letter-basic-manners-elude-you/
Artfldgr on November 20, 2019 at 11:35 am said:
Ukrainian members of parliament have demanded the presidents of Ukraine and the United States, Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, investigate suspicions ….
* * *
Source of story looks to be here:
https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/press-conference/625831.html
J.E. Dyer tackles that allegation with interesting results.
It’s the Ukraine.
It’s … complicated.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/11/21/hmm-ukrainian-mps-abrupt-announcement-of-burisma-linked-money-laundering-allegation-has-major-fact-problem/
AesopFan:
Interesting ….
“What’s up Doc?”
“Be very quiet, we’re hunting wabbits, wepublican wabbits.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzQ9kxs6RL8
stan Brown on November 20, 2019 at 4:40 pm said:
not to mention that such behaviors are reserved for others of gentlemanly or womanly behavior!!!!!!
ie. you dont treat a skank like a lady.. it sullies real ladies
and that is one of the things the feminists changed… ie. you get the reward without the behavior… so now we have people upset he isnt a gentleman to everyone, rather than he IS being right and proper and reserving that behavior for those that deserve it in their behavior.. not automatically by station..
you do not reward bad behavior with good behavior
you dont call a evil woman a lady
you dont call a evil man a gentleman
neither deserve the social reward
and others do not deserve to be false believers they are good because good people are too afraid to label them correctly.
Julie near Chicago on November 20, 2019 at 10:17 pm said:
Aesop,
Lord Peter! Now you’re talkin’. …
* * *
My early reading consisted of so many British writers (Sayers, Christie, etc), that
I used to joke that I knew more Brit-speak than Yankee-isms. I also tended to put “u” in the middle of words, and go to the theatre.
I never really liked Harriet until Gaudy Night.
That she was Dorothy’s avatar is quite obvious.
My choice for the cinema: Jeremy Brett in his younger “My Fair Lady” days, but with the manic gravitas of his Sherlockian ouevre.
Micha elyi put in the claim that Trump supporters do not fight.
I wasn’t a Trump supporter to start with.
Not to brag, but I was Navy. I’ve been in fights from Norfolk to Pohang to Mombasa. I’ve walked away from more fights than you can imagine. But the thing is sometimes the fight is upon you. And you can’t walk away.
Aesop,
So vhat iss ziss “theatre”? That don’t look like no AmerEnglish vhat I know uff.
[Plizz to forgive the mixed pidgenry. ;>) ]
I’ve never heard of Jeremy Brett. :>( After all I am just a simple farm girl and my theater experiences almost all occurred in the high-school gym. :>((
Rex Harrison is the only Prof. ‘Iggins I know of. And I’m sorry to say that the only Broadway plays I’ve seen are the original Barefoot in the Park (Robert *ugh* Redford, talk about a narcissist! –No offense meant if you are a fan) and 20th Century Limited in Chicago*, with Rock Hudson and Ann Miller — IIRC.
*Aerie Crown Theatre (in McCormick Place) was Broadway for purposes of Chicago. :LOL:
Heh. About those “u”s, and “theatre,” “centre,” etc. For some reason it entertains me to “spell British” on British sites even when the Americans spell American. In HS I came in with a 99 on one of our geometry tests even though the math was all 100%. “Vhass ist?” sez I to our teacher. “You misspelled ‘center,’ sez he.” “Did not,” I said vehemently. That’s perfectly correct — it’s just the English spelling. “This isn’t England,” he replies. GRRRRRRR, growls I.
Heh. Later I found out why the Federal Case. He was Mennonite, and it’s a point of Mennonite doctrine that only God can be perfect. So, his religion required him to find a flaw in all things created Here Below, including by lowly math students. Thank the Great Frog I used the English spelling! He/it/she did manage to save Mr. Oyer’s immortal soul.
Oh well. I’m still here, >60 years later, and I hope he is too (I think he was 22 at the time — it was his first year out of college). If that’s the worst that ever happens…. :>)))!!!
Support for Jeremy Brett as Peter Wimsey, especially the headshot of his early youth.
Lord Peter, IIRC, was probably not as handsome as Brett, although he was striking in appearance.
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/nostalgia/sherlock-holmes-kill-midland-actor-11894976
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jeremy_Brett_Headshot.jpg
“I have to ask you, who would be your pick of 20th-century movie stars to play Lord Peter? (I’ve known who it should be for decades, of course. *g*) If you’ll tell, I’ll tell. :>)))” – Julie
Were you thinking of Rex Harrison?
Not a bad choice.
“you dont treat a skank like a lady.. it sullies real ladies” – Artfldgr
Very old story I heard many years ago.
A man in an elevator was joined by two women.
He respectfully removed his hat (men did that, back in those days).
While the women were chatting with each other, one of them began to get quite “blue” in her expressions. (That’s what we used to call cussin’ and such.)
He put his hat back on.