Interpreting Trump and the Never or Anti Trumpers

[GregH]

You claim to be some kind of logic expert Bert. Perhaps you should look up strawman fallacy. I specifically said a few few posts ago it was not about the word. And no, you won’t admit you are wrong—you never do.

Well, Greg, it could be, or it could be that the root of your argument is that Trump used a bad word, and hence you’re making a distinction without significance, one that depends on not only the emotional impact of a bad word, but also on some pretty disputable testimony, as well as a disputable notion that using that phrase about a nation is inherently racist. Suffice it to say that I’d hesitate to bring such evidence to a court if I were a lawyer.

Sorry, but without the word, you’d have nothing to say here.

And really, if one wants to predict nations where you’d have a lot of people willing to risk machine gun fire to get out, the predominantly Caucasian nations of Communism come to mind, as does the caucasian nation of Bosnia. You want a predictor for this, it’s not race, but rather Communism and/or Islam.

A crude insult could be expressed crudely in a wide variety of ways.

But I think we’re missing something pretty obvious here: does anybody seriously doubt that Trump is the kind of person who talks this way on a regular basis? Secondly, is there much doubt that the alleged remark expresses his actual attitude?

The second is more debatable, maybe, but the first is right up there with “skunks usually emit a strong smell” in the obviousness category.

As for the latter, I personally have no doubt of that either and it takes a whole lot of effort to keep rationalizing away the evidence on that point.

But even if only the first premise is true, that Trump is the sort of man who talks this way on a regular basis, outrage at his being accused of this is silly. It’s not like the accusation lowers anybody’s opinion of him. The still-dazzled few who think every accusation of crude insensitivity is “fake news,” are not going to think less of him no matter what. He could probably declare himself Dictator for Life and burn the Constitution and they’d say “It’s about time somebody had some guts in Washington!” (Or, more likely “What about the Democrats who keep ignoring the Constitution and legislating from the bench!?!”)

As for everyone else, we can’t think less of him when yet one more crass insult comes out of him — or is falsely attributed to him.

The whole thing is barely worth a shrug and a “Well, yes, he is being himself again… or maybe it didn’t happen this time, but it changes nothing either way.” Where I part with many “just Trump being Trump” people, is that many of them (Jerry Falwell Jr. a recent example), seem to think this is some kind of defense. It certainly isn’t anything like a defense. It’s just facing reality.

[Bert Perry]

GregH wrote:

You claim to be some kind of logic expert Bert. Perhaps you should look up strawman fallacy. I specifically said a few few posts ago it was not about the word. And no, you won’t admit you are wrong—you never do.

Well, Greg, it could be, or it could be that the root of your argument is that Trump used a bad word, and hence you’re making a distinction without significance, one that depends on not only the emotional impact of a bad word, but also on some pretty disputable testimony, as well as a disputable notion that using that phrase about a nation is inherently racist. Suffice it to say that I’d hesitate to bring such evidence to a court if I were a lawyer.

Sorry, but without the word, you’d have nothing to say here.

And really, if one wants to predict nations where you’d have a lot of people willing to risk machine gun fire to get out, the predominantly Caucasian nations of Communism come to mind, as does the caucasian nation of Bosnia. You want a predictor for this, it’s not race, but rather Communism and/or Islam.

Two things you need to learn to say Bert;

1) I was mistaken about that.

2) I actually in fact do not know everything about everything.

In spite of your ignorant assertions to the contrary, I have said repeatedly it is not about that particular word. You keep ignoring that so you can keep your strawman erect I guess. Go for it. In the meantime, I will continue to hold the position that there is plenty to say about Trump, including his demonstrated racism.

He could probably declare himself Dictator for Life and burn the Constitution and they’d say “It’s about time somebody had some guts in Washington!” (Or, more likely “What about the Democrats who keep ignoring the Constitution and legislating from the bench!?!”)

Or maybe the reason I don’t come around to your point of view—which is really your complaint, be honest now—is that you’ve never presented any evidence for your point of view. Even when it was within your area of expertise, a place where you could have made things clear, theoretically, with 30 seconds of work,bupkus. Wild claims about how a non-racial term amounts to racism, sure. Wild claims about how a clearly disputed claim is indisputable, sure. Evidence? Dream on, I guess.

Good luck convincing me with that approach, Greg. Good luck. Maybe you need to look in the mirror when you’re telling people that they need to figure out they’re wrong.

[Bert Perry]

Or maybe the reason I don’t come around to your point of view—which is really your complaint, be honest now—is that you’ve never presented any evidence for your point of view. Even when it was within your area of expertise, a place where you could have made things clear, theoretically, with 30 seconds of work,bupkus. Wild claims about how a non-racial term amounts to racism, sure. Wild claims about how a clearly disputed claim is indisputable, sure. Evidence? Dream on, I guess.

Good luck convincing me with that approach, Greg. Good luck. Maybe you need to look in the mirror when you’re telling people that they need to figure out they’re wrong.

Haha, I will be honest if you ask :) Hate to break it to you but I really don’t care what you think. I am not interested in investing my time into trying to change your mind. Not even 30 seconds.

Exactly, Greg. You will take significant amounts of time to claim that I can’t admit I’m wrong, but actually providing evidence to demonstrate that to me, or others, is not worth it to you. Sorry, but that says something very significant about your character.

Again, you want to find someone who can’t admit he’s wrong? Shave.

Got it Bert. I will go sign up for character class and buy a disposable razor. Good day :)

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.” Here’s my answer:

We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain? We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney? And the results were always the same.

This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party. I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”

The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today.

The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.

With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War.

During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”

General George Patton was a vulgar-talking, (not-very-nice-guy). In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum, then Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich.

Trump is fighting. And what’s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel’s, he’s shouting, “You magnificent (“idiots”), I read your book!” That is just the icing on the cake, but it’s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he’s defeating the Left using their own tactics.

That book is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – a book so essential to the Liberals’ war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis. It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.

Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do.

First, instead of going after “the fake media” – and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri – Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal. Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.”

Everyone gets that it’s not just CNN – in fact, in a world where Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof are people of influence and whose “reporting” is in no way significantly different than CNN’s – CNN is just a piker.

Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. With Trump’s ability to go around them, they cannot simply stand pat. They need to respond. This leaves them with only two choices.

They can either “go high” (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery.

The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive.

Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s, church.

Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.

This makes “going high” a non-starter for CNN. This leaves them no other option but to ratchet up the fake news, conjuring up the next “nothing burger” and devoting 24 hours a day to hysterical rants about how it’s “worse than Nixon.”

This, obviously, is what CNN has chosen to do. The problem is that, as they become more and more hysterical, they become more and more obvious. Each new effort at even faker news than before and faker “outrage” only makes that much more clear to any objective observer that Trump is and always has been right about the fake news media.

And, by causing their hysteria, Trump has forced them into numerous, highly embarrassing and discrediting mistakes. Thus, in their desperation, they have lowered their standards even further and run with articles so clearly fake that, even with the liberal (lower case “l”) libel laws protecting the media, they’ve had to wholly retract and erase their stories repeatedly.

Their flailing at Trump has even seen them cross the line into criminality, with CNN using their vast corporate fortune to hunt down a private citizen for having made fun of them in an Internet meme. This threat to “dox” – release of personal information to encourage co-ideologists to visit violence upon him and his family — a political satirist was chilling in that it clearly wasn’t meant just for him. If it were, there would have been no reason for CNN to have made their “deal” with him public.

Instead, CNN – playing by “Chicago Rules” – was sending a message to any and all: dissent will not be tolerated.

This heavy-handed and hysterical response to a joke on the Internet has backfired on CNN, giving rise to only more righteous ridicule.

So, to my friends on the Left – and the #NeverTrumpers as well — do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and “dignified” and “proper”? Of course I do. These aren’t those times. This is war. And it’s a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years.

So, say anything you want about this president – I get it, he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don’t care. I can’t spare this man. He fights.

Evan Sayet is the author of The KinderGarden of Eden: How The Modern Liberal Thinks. His lecture to the Heritage Foundation on this same topic remains, some ten years later, by far the single most viewed lecture in their history. Evan can be reached at contactevansayet@gmail.com

Mike, I sincerely hope this article does not represent your own beliefs and if so, I feel sorry for your church. I have to say I want nothing to do with a version of Christianity that would embrace this kind of thinking. In fact, I am through listening to anyone that wants to preach morals/Christianity if they embrace this kind of thinking. In my view, they have nothing to offer.

For almost every example you can give of Cotton lying, I can find articles saying the folks who say he lied are lying or mischaracterizing him. (What sources are you going to, Joel? I see criticism from MSNBC and mostly liberal sources; I don’t trust a thing they say.) So… doesn’t hold much water to me.

On Obama and the farm bill, Cotton has defended his wording and meaning here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hngey0vVhU

Cotton on the Dream Act: http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/09/17/cotton-dream-act-single-bigge…

In some cases, Cotton may have been speaking with flawed stats. That doesn’t mean he was lying (which implies intent to deceive) but using incorrect data. One can mistakenly say something without it being a lie; it’s just incorrect. Not saying Cotton is the fourth member of the deity, but I am saying that he is a man of perhaps *more* integrity than Durbin and others cited, who are known for their fudging on the truth.

BTW, now three folks (not two) at the meeting have said they never heard what Durbin claims the president said. Doesn’t matter. CNN and MSNBC and others have made it a fact that Trump said it; they don’t care whether he did or didn’t. Another tactic in the liberal playbook: say it enough times and everybody will believe it. And now this may affect the government shutdown. It all smells of being coordinated to again make our president look bad. Should be no surprise; this has been going on since he took office.

Thank you.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on Os Guinness’ call for mutual civility in the public square. In the long run, do you believe a mutually escalating war of words and deeds is really the most productive way forward for people, of all faiths and none? Which approach advances the cause of the Gospel?

[Adam Blumer]

For almost every example you can give of Cotton lying, I can find articles saying the folks who say he lied are lying or mischaracterizing him. (What sources are you going to, Joel? I see criticism from MSNBC and mostly liberal sources; I don’t trust a thing they say.) So… doesn’t hold much water to me.

On Obama and the farm bill, Cotton has defended his wording and meaning here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hngey0vVhU

In some cases, Cotton may have been speaking with flawed stats. That doesn’t mean he was lying (which implies intent to deceive) but using incorrect data. One can mistakenly say something without it being a lie; it’s just incorrect. Not saying Cotton is the fourth member of the deity, but I am saying that he is a man of perhaps *more* integrity than Durbin and others cited, who are known for their fudging on the truth.

BTW, now three folks (not two) at the meeting have said they never heard what Durbin claims the president said. Doesn’t matter. CNN and MSNBC and others have made it a fact that Trump said it; they don’t care whether he did or didn’t. Another tactic in the liberal playbook: say it enough times and everybody will believe it. And now this may affect the government shutdown. It all smells of being coordinated to again make our president look bad. Should be no surprise; this has been going on since he took office.

The newest spin from Republicans to defend Cotton and Perdue is that they heard Trump say s—house instead of s—hole which would make their denials technically correct. It would also make them pragmatic, disgusting excuses for politicians and dishonest to boot regardless of technicalities (in my opinion).

You guys go ahead and continue to defend this kind of behavior from Trump, Cotton and Perdue but don’t be offended when Christians are correctly called out as hypocrites.

Some people (I wonder who) are saying the Republicans are spinning this as a slight change in wording doesn’t make it so. Why assume the people making this claim are correct? I again state that we don’t know what was said in the room. There’s no reason to assume we do. We also don’t know Cotton, Perdue, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who was also in the meeting, are doing this. But if you want to believe it (CNN and MSNBC would love for you to), that’s your choice.

Worth reading (implies intent behind all this): https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-sen-tom-cotton-on-face-the-nati…