“Get over it” say Trump supporters

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve noticed the line over and over from Trump supporters addressing people who aren’t the least bit happy at the prospect of a Trump nomination: “Get over it!”

It seems to summarize the feeling tone of a lot of the Trump activists online: we are the wave of the future, resistance is futile, it’s time to welcome your new insect overlords. That’s not persuasive, but they’re not trying to persuade. They’re trying to overpower and to discourage with a chant of “nah nah nah nah nah.”

Many Trump supporters also write things like, “You forced me to vote for Dole, Bush, McCain, and Romney, because they were the nominees. So now you’d better vote for Trump if he’s the nominee unless you want to be called out for the hypocrite you are.” Leaving aside the fact that it’s not possible to force someone to vote for a particular candidate (short of holding a gun to the person’s head and going into the voting both with him), are there parallels here?

I don’t think so. Trump is not just a candidate with whom people differ on policy items, or think is too conservative or not conservative enough or whatever it was that people didn’t like about the aforementioned Gang of Four, he represents a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. This is no ordinary disagreement between the more moderate and more conservative wings of the party; this a difference more profound.

Here are a few reasons why Trump’s candidacy isn’t business as usual:

(1) Never having held any public office at any level, Trump has no record to look to and no experience in office-holding or governing.
(2) Trump has a history of supporting Democrats and has called himself a liberal on most issues, and if he’s a bona fide political changer he’s certainly never explained his change (unlike, for example, Reagan, who worked for conservative causes for decades after his political change, and then held office for many years at the governor level).
(3) There are multiple character issues with Trump that are well-known and dramatic and go to the heart of whether he has anything like the temperament required to be president.
(4) Trump often shows little grasp of policy issues when speaking, and is inconsistent on a host of subjects, putting out proposals and almost immediately walking them back or modifying them considerably.
(5) Trump has leveled an extremely serious charge against the previous Republican president (Bush lied!!), one that heretofore was only offered by the far left.
(6) Trump has shown a marked tendency towards strongman rule, with him as the strongman.
(7) Trump is not supported by the majority of Republican voters; he has a plurality only, and a lot of his votes seem to come in the primaries from Democrats (who may or may not actually support him in the general).

These are qualitatively different objections than the objections to previous candidates and nominees. In fact, a good argument can be made that someone as far outside a particular party as Trump is would ordinarily run Independent or third-party, and that his Republican candidacy can be likened to a hostile takeover. Whether people who think that way are alarmists is unknown, but what is certainly true is that Trump is a very, very different candidate. That accounts for both the intensity of his support and for the intensity of the opposition to him.

Describing the Trump voter

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are some observations from commenter “Bob” on the Trump voters he met and talked to while canvassing for Cruz about a week ago. I thought they were worth highlighting:

I canvassed for Cruz, and found it quite illuminating speaking directly with voters one on one. Although it is only anecdotal, in speaking with Trump supporters I would rate the groups in this ascending order: I found very few that would be considered the base (all older, mostly elderly that have voted republican for many years) a slightly higher percentage that I suspected of racism, some leftists, quite a few disaffected democrats, and a plurality that have never voted before (mostly limited education). My impression was that the vast majority were just fed up with the entire situation as it is today, and were extremely tired of hearing how it was all their fault because they were racist white people. In short, Trump definitely tapped into years of built up frustration with the anti PC language, and as a consequence, hardened their attitudes and made them fervent believers in all things Donald. With the supporters of all the other candidates there was at least a cordial exchange of ideas, a willingness for give and take, not one of his could I persuade in any way to even listen to any other viewpoint; their minds were made up, almost like they were victims of Trauma. Those that would speak to me at length would only reiterate the false talking points of Trump in an uninterrupted diatribe, quite a few slammed doors in my face. It was like Breibart’s comments section in the real world. The experience demonstrated quite clearly how a populist demagogue, like Mussolini who Trump reminds me of, could secure a loyal and dedicated following.

The Mussolini reference, by the way, is not to Trump’s policies, but to the devotion of his followers. Bob could just as easily have said Obama, or Huey Long, or any number of politicians who have engendered that sort of devotion.

Bob left out the activists, although I doubt they’d be answering the door to a canvasser and so I’m not sure he would meet any of them. I have a draft for a post on the alt-right, who are the Trump activists par excellence, and I keep promising to publish it but obviously I haven’t finished it yet. Soon.

Discontent is abroad in the land, and politicians who are smart will tap into it if they can. Trump has managed to do that. He’s been flirting with a presidential run for a long long time (that’s another draft of mine). But it’s only this year that he’s caught the wave and is in the process (most likely) or surfing it to the shore of the Republican nomination, whether most Republicans like it or not.

That’s still another draft of mine, by the way (I’m loaded with unfinished drafts; so much to think about): the fact that the majority of Republicans do not like it.

Free speech and the election: protests force canceling of Trump event in Chicago

The New Neo Posted on by

What happened to cause the cancelation of the Trump rally at the University of Illinois for security reasons due to protests was a subset of a growing tendency of the left to shut down free speech on several fronts. Note that the canceled event was at a Chicago college; in recent years university students and political hangers-on and organizers from the left have been in the forefront of shutting down college speakers they don’t like by organizing huge and noisy protests. Trump’s rally is definitely an extension of this, although he’s not merely an extension of it; he has his own role.

I see Trump as positioning himself as a lightning rod for the violence and anger abroad in the land. But that’s not really a good metaphor because a lightning rod exists to channel the electrical forces harmlessly into the ground. Trump arouses strong feelings on both sides, and he uses and magnifies the already-existing anger on the part of many Americans, and to say that this is a fact is not to blame him for causing it but to state the obvious. He absolutely has the right to speak, and protesters have the right to protest what he says without shutting his speech down, and no one has the right to be violent except in self-defense.

Violence should be controlled before it ever gets to the point of stopping a speech or of causing a riot. But how? That is the question.

Those of us who were alive in 1968 and old enough to remember the protests near the Democratic Convention in the city of Chicago, as well as the police response to those demonstrations, know what can happen. And that’s by no means the worst that can happen with protests and the attempts to control them. I described the 1968 Convention protests here in some detail, but right now I’ll just summarize and say that the protesters were leftist activists with an agenda to provoke violence from the Chicago police and the police obliged them, and that the venue was not the convention itself but a park near it.

Here it explains how planned, widespread, and varied the demonstrations were, and how the police had expected them and prepared for them. There were also park permits the protesters applied for and in some cases were granted. In addition, there were plans by the protesters to involve the black neighborhoods of Chicago, and even a Ferguson-like incident (the shooting of Dean Johnson, a 17-year-old who had fired a pistol at police and was killed by police in return).

I have little doubt that those who organized the Trump protests were aware of some of the 1968 history, if not all the details. But this time one of their main goals is to shut down speech rather than merely protest it. The dilemma police and security face now with Trump is that these protests are going to happen, and in fact may escalate because of all the publicity around this one and as he comes closer to getting the nomination. A solution must be found and it’s not clear what it should be.

Already further rallies have been postponed because of the threat of similar problems at them. It’s not even clear what sparked the clashes at the Chicago event, because it seems that the bulk of the altercations occurred after the cancelation rather than before it:

Chaos ensued after organizers announced the rally was canceled shortly after 6:30 p.m. at the UIC Pavillion. Police ejected at least a half dozen anti-Trump demonstrators, including one man who snuck on stage and approached the podium…

…the scuffles were brief, and some protesters said the security concerns were overstated…

Anthony Guglielmi, a police department spokesman, said the Trump campaign did not consult the police department before canceling.

“They did not consult us at all,” he said. “The decision was made by the campaign on its own.”

While many dispersed after the rally was canceled, hundreds of people protested outside. They chanted and cheered, as supporters screamed back “Trump! Trump! Trump!”

Sorting this out and trying to get at the truth of what happened is beyond my powers at this point, but my guess is that there were a lot of protesters ready to disrupt the rally, there was not enough police presence nor was the presence effective, the Trump supporters were angered by the situation, it escalated rather than being calmed down, and there will be more of this because it suits everyone’s needs.

That includes Trump, who gets the opportunity to act like the free speech advocate he most definitely has never been. I wrote an article two months ago for American Thinker in which I said:

Remember back when Donald Trump was saying the following about Pam Geller, in response to the ISIS-inspired attack on her free speech get-together in Garland, Texas ”“ the attempt that ended with the perpetrators being shot dead by armed guards?

“The U.S. has enough problems without publicity seekers going out and openly mocking religion in order to provoke attacks and death. BE SMART”

And here are some further quotes from Trump. Note especially the first one:

This has nothing to do with free speech ”“ this is taunting, and all it does is cause trouble.”

“She should be much more responsible because what she’s doing is completely irresponsible!”

“She’s a person that is doing this for her own purpose and she’s doing a terrible thing for our country!“

“”¦if she went after, instead, JESUS, instead of the Muslim, went after JESUS, let’s see how long she’d last! If she went after the African-Americans, and went after the N-WORD, where she was positive on it as opposed to”¦ let’s SEE how long she would last! That would also be freedom of speech! Let’s see if she has the guts to do that. ”¦

All she’s doing, she is a provacateur! All she doing is provoking and taunting people!!”

In response to yesterday’s cancelation and turmoil, the other GOP candidates have said that, although the protesters are fully responsible for what they do, Trump has created a “climate” or “culture” or “environment” that encourages violence. Their statements, if you read them in full, are true as descriptions of the situation, and they were careful to make it clear that Trump can say what he wants and should be free to do so without violence. Contrast that with what Trump said about Geller and there’s no question that Trump is far less of a free speech advocate than the others, but this will not stop the criticism of them.

Trump himself has encouraged violence many times as a response to protesters, upping the ante, but even if Trump backed off on this (which I don’t predict he will do) it would not stop this. The protesters are determined to cause a scene and silence speech they don’t like (and not just with Trump, either), and/or to provoke police or security violence and make martyrs of themselves a la Chicago 1968. It’s a win-win situation for them, and it must be controlled.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a solution except to say that security must increase, it would be best that it be official and visible (police) rather than private or vigilante, and it must be in place in advance in order to prevent confrontations. Perhaps this means better screening of attendees and confining of protests to cordoned areas.

But the left will never give up, that’s for sure. Freedom of speech is one of the great things about America, but it’s a risky proposition and always was. The Founders knew that, but they decided it was well worth the risk. It still is, although it will never be easy.

World’s oldest man

The New Neo Posted on by

Can you imagine the strength of this man’s constitution? Phenomenal:

A 112-year-old Holocaust survivor has officially been named the oldest living man in the world.

Israel Kristal was born on September 15, 1903, and became the record holder today, at the age of 112 years and 178 days, Guinness World Records confirmed to ABC News.

“I don’t know the secret for long life,” Kristal said upon achieving the title. “I believe that everything is determined from above and we shall never know the reasons why. There have been smarter, stronger and better looking men then me who are no longer alive. All that is left for us to do is to keep on working as hard as we can and rebuild what is lost.”…

After the Nazis invaded Poland, Kristal was moved into the Lé³dz ghetto with his family in 1939. Four years later, he was sent to Auschwitz.

Kristal survived the camp, but lost his wife, Chaja Feige Frucht and their two children.

He remarried, had more children, moved to Israel, and this is his family today:

family

Rebuilding.

No-poo

The New Neo Posted on by

Say it isn’t so—the no-poo trend isn’t the panacea for curly hair that it was cracked up to be?

As a curly-headed woman myself, I have a dog in this race. I gave up on no-poo quite a while ago because it just didn’t feel right, and the shampoo I currently use is this one, although who knows whether it matters or not. At least it smells good enough to eat.

My hair is a wonderful thing and a difficult thing. It has a tendency to be frizzy, to actually resolve into some sort of ‘fro just a couple of days after washing, and even the day I wash it if I don’t load it down with several “products.” That shampoo is just the beginning; I’ve got an arsenal of things I’ve bought and discarded, and although I’m constantly changing, my current regimen involves these two weapons, as well: conditioner and styler.

The dirty little secret about curly hair like mine is that it tends to remain very clean in terms of oil. Simply put, my hair does not seem to produce it. In fact, I would have to roll my head in dirt or sand to actually get it dirty, and I could go for weeks without washing it although I usually do wash it every week or a bit more frequently (and I don’t roll around in dirt), just to recondition it.

Curly hair is sort of strange in other ways, too. When you’re feeling in a certain mood, you can just take random curls and snip them a bit to change the shape of the whole edifice and no one’s much the wiser. The hair is very forgiving in that way, and doesn’t require any sort of precision.

It occurs to me that I’ve written quite a bit about my hair products lately. Perhaps this is to escape from the constant preoccupation with a political scene that seems designed to make one’s hair stand on end.

The Hillary email saga continues

The New Neo Posted on by

Fox reports that Hillary’s IT specialist could become a very damaging witness to her:

The source said Pagliano told the FBI who had access to the former secretary of state’s system ”“ as well as when ”“ and what devices were used, amounting to a roadmap for investigators.

“Bryan Pagliano is a devastating witness and, as the webmaster, knows exactly who had access to [Clinton’s] computer and devices at specific times. His importance to this case cannot be over-emphasized,” the intelligence source said…

A source close to Pagliano did not dispute the basic details of what was provided to the FBI, but said the highly skilled former State Department IT specialist had met with the bureau on a “limited basis” and was at best a “peripheral” player in the investigation.

I have long predicted that Hillary Clinton will not be indicted, unless for some reason the Obama administration decides that there is a more viable candidate that could replace her as the Democratic nominee (which I also don’t think is likely to happen). I strongly suspect that it doesn’t matter what evidence emerges or how “devastating” it is.

Update on the Michelle Fields story

The New Neo Posted on by

[UPDATED further below]

Trump has made a statement, and a lot of video has emerged, on the incident where Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is alleged to have grabbed Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields by the arm and thrown her to the floor.

As usual, Trump has accused the accuser:

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump accused Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields of fabricating her accusation that his campaign manager grabbed her hard enough to leave a bruise during a campaign event.

“Perhaps she made the story up. I think that’s what happened,” Trump told reporters after Thursday night’s GOP debate in Miami of Tuesday night’s alleged incident.

In a later statement issued Friday morning, the Trump campaign said the accusation is “entirely false” and that the staff had “no knowledge of said situation.”…

The Jupiter Police Department confirmed to NBC News on Friday that a police report about the incident has been filed and that an investigation is ongoing.

…The Trump campaign manager attacked Fields in a series of tweets, calling her an “attention” seeker ”” which prompted the journalist to tweet a picture of her bruised arm.

Lewandowski later continued to tweet about Fields, calling her an “attention seeker” and questioning her journalistic integrity.

Trump’s campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks also cast aspersions on Fields’ reporting, saying in a statement that the Breitbart reporter had “never met” Lewandowski.

After that statement, Breitbart said it was “disappointed” in the campaign’s response and “in particular their effort to demean” Fields’ previous reporting.

This despite the evidence of a bruise on Fields’ arm, and an audio that supports her charge (it’s of Fields and a WaPo reporter witness talking immediately afterwards).

Today there are also multiple videos emerging. None show a crystal clear view of the exact moment the incident occurred, but they show enough that the following seems clear:

(1) Some incident of the sort occurred; Fields does not seem to be making anything up in that regard.

(2) It was either at the hands of Lewandowski (most likely) or possibly a security guard right next to him, or both:

More video airing at The Daily Beast. Ben Terris [the WaPo reporter witness] followed along and maintained an excellent vantage point (I always check the position of the refs during these endless booth reviews). C Lewandowski clearly reached for Fields’ arm as the group passed behind the same damn obstacle. Possible remaining spin – the security guy, presumably Secret Service, finished the job that C Lew ineffectually began.

Well. The call on the field is that C Lew grabbed her. Pending more video, there is nowhere near enough to overturn that.

This incident reflects on Trump in two ways. The first is that, if Fields is correct in the identification of Lewandowski as the person who grabbed her arm and threw her down, Trump’s contention about choosing “the best people” is suspect. Of course, I suppose it depends on how he would answer the question “best at what?” And the other way it matters is (as I contended in my first post on the subject) what is shows about Trump’s reactions and instincts.

His first reaction (and usually his second, third, fourth, and fifth, and on and on) is to blame the other person. And not just to blame the person for error (that would not be so bad on Trump’s part), but to cast aspersions on the person’s veracity, motives, and character. Now, some may think this is just an example of Trump’s ability to fight. I’d say it’s just another in many examples of his thin skin, poor character, ability to fight dirty, and vengeful retaliatory nature. This may have worked for him quite nicely as celebrity and builder but it bodes ill for the rest of us in terms of his behavior if he were to gain the enormous power of the highest office in the land.

Another interesting thing is to see Trump’s followers make excuses for him and jump on the bandwagon to attack Fields and/or to say the media deserves it anyway (which is pretty weird, since Breitbart has been Trump’s greatest booster). Go to any blog that attracts a lot of Trump supporters and you’ll have no trouble seeing what I’m talking about.

It seems that no one—including the Big Guy—would ever say something like, “I stand behind my campaign manager and believe he is innocent and Fields mistaken, but if evidence comes out that such a thing did happen then I would of course condemn it.” I realize that Trump would consider such a statement a sign of weakness, and against his usual strategy of denial and character assassination. I’m wondering whether he’s ever tracked back anything in his life.

[ADDENDUM: More video emerges.]

[ADDENDUM II: Ace has an excellent post on the subject, and in another post of his about it he writes, “I didn’t join the conservative movement to become a fascist.” Ace, by the way, is another changer.]

[UPDATE 3/14: Even more video has surfaced which purports to show the moment of contact involved, and does not involve a push of the magnitude alleged. Since there were supposedly two moments of contact (at least that’s what I read earlier) shown on other videos, I’m not sure what this new video proves or disproves, or where it fits into the sequence. Nor was I sure what the previous videos showed, either.

Again, just to sum up what we know: there was some sort of touching, or perhaps two touchings. Did either involve a squeeze hard enough to bruise? Or to almost push Fields down? Certainly nothing of that sort is shown on any of the videos, but Trump’s campaign manager does seem to have touched Fields.

I’ve never been able to figure out what happened, and I still am not, but my primary interest in the entire thing is Trump’s reaction. Earlier in this post I suggested what I think he should have said, a response which would have denied any wrongdoing on the part of Lewandowski but would have caused scarcely a ripple of controversy. I repeat it here: “I stand behind my campaign manager and believe he is innocent and Fields mistaken, but if evidence comes out that such a thing did happen then I would of course condemn it.”]

Ace explains why he went from Trump-curious to anti-Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

A good post by Ace.

Ace’s blog is one of the few I follow regularly, and for a while I’ve noticed that Ace (who has for a long time been very angry at the GOP establishment) was amenable to Trump’s candidacy, although never completely all-in for him. And then—I seem to recall it was around the time that Trump repeated his “Bush lied” message during a debate—I saw that Ace’s posts became more negative about Trump.

Here’s his explanation:

You can read Trump in two different ways. You can see his bluster and lack of any policy knowledge as refreshing. You can see his hyperpersonal style and enormous ego as somehow “authentic.”

On the other hand, you can see a guy who’s entire life is devoted to persuading people to get into business with him. A salesman, trying to make a sale. And you can start to see that the salesman really has no interest in his actual product, and no real intent to abide by the terms of the contract. A salesman who is just willing to say whatever he needs you to say to sign the dotted line — and who will decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not to abide by those contract terms, should they become inconvenient later.

The thing is, while I can’t make anyone see this way, I can tell you I went from being a Type 1 person to a Type 2 person. I would waver between these views of Trump, but then eventually I was won to the Type 2 way of seeing things, and now that I see it, I can’t not see it.

Please read the whole thing.

I agree with every word of it, except that I’ve been a Trump-opponent right along. I also have a bunch of additional criticisms of Trump which I’ve already described ad nauseam in close to 100 posts and have no need to reiterate here.

I think a lot of people who support Trump are mired in Ace’s Type 1 view of Trump, and they can’t or won’t change their minds because (1) a mind is a very difficult thing to change; and (2) it would make them lose hope, a hope Trump has given them.

However, note that I said “a lot.” That doesn’t mean “all.” I think a lot of other Trump supporters actually don’t care what Trump turns out to be, as long as his candidacy wreaks havoc with the GOP—and he’s already fulfilled that mission.