The WaPo link at the top is their spin on the NRO Issue "Against Trump", the NRO excellent concluding paragraph:
Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out. Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.The entire NRO lead editorial is well worth reading, loaded with excellent points. The largest point that I would add is that the time for excessive Trump bashing is past. I would have MUCH preferred if Trump had flamed out MUCH earlier, but the current reality "is what it is" -- he may well yet be defeated, but there is at least an equal chance he will be the nominee of the Republican party. The fact that the Republican National Committee (RNC) has dropped NRO from being a debate sponsor, apparently for the anti-Trump issue, even though the RNC response to the BO SOTU speech included a swipe at the Donald, their own frontrunner, shows how lost the RNC and really anyone who thinks themselves "conservative" is!
My observation is that for at least the last three years, we are a lost set of humanity with no shared principles, ethnicity, goals, vision, laws, religion, tradition, or culture living in the area once controlled by a great nation based on ideas asserted to be timeless, but now largely unknown to a disjoint and corrupted population and feckless leadership. For the tragic group of refugees from meaning and purpose stranded in this area of N America, there are no "self evident truths", nor "endowments by a creator", and for the small percentage of the population that even understands the concepts of freedom, equality of opportunity, rule of law, etc, we are faced to try to communicate with masses that have no "truth" and certainly not a "creator" upon which to base anything.
We have strongly declared ourselves to NOT be a "Christian Nation", to not be a "Nation of Law rather than men", and certainly not "the home of the brave". We are not a "nation" in anything save a largely unknown and heavily misappropriated "history". Strangely, there DOES seem to be an "evolving" (brewing?) consensus developing to replace "One Nation, Under God, With Liberty and Justice for All". I'd proffer "Random Godless People, With Free Stuff , Amorality and Political Correctness for ALL (meaning anyone that can schlep in over open borders).
The WaPo article is fairly forgettable, but I did like this view:
So far in this presidential election cycle, the front-running Trump has proven remarkably impervious to media criticism; if anything, he has been strengthened by negative press. His backers — a coalition of the disgruntled — seem to interpret every suggestion that electing or even nominating Trump is terrible idea as proof that it's actually a great one, kind of like the way my 1-year-old thinks everything I tell her not to put in her mouth must, in fact, be a delicious treat of which I am trying to deprive her.
Do you see what I did there? I insulted Trump supporters by likening them to a small child. But I did that for a reason. This, I think, is the great flaw in most Trump critiques: They're patronizing, and the people who have fallen in love with this billionaire's cavalier campaign can sniff out condescension like ... well, maybe it's best not to try another analogy.Ah, "condescension". If BO was forced to remove the condescending "Straw Man" argument from his speeches, he would be left with only self glorification to open his yap for! Trump is a clear product of BO (condescension, raw partisanship, lawless, etc), the culture of celebrity, the loss of any shared national ethos, and the lack of any real Republican opposition to the BO disaster. The minority of people that wanted what was "America" to continue ("the bitter clingers") are of course sad, angry, disappointed, disaffected, and basically the equivalent of spiritual refugees living in the territory they once thought they were a part of in spirit as well as flesh.
Lest any fall prey to the now commonly held view that such a sentiment is a sign of "racism" or worse (if such exists), I include this, which I happened to read in a Jefferson Biography just yesterday ... the following is from Alexander Hamilton after some time of Jefferson's presidency, "What can I do better than withdraw from the scene? Every day proves to me more and more that this American world was not meant for me". (John Meacham, "The Art of Power", p 367)
The nation has gone through many painful changes -- but I would argue that the last seven years have seen the greatest loss of especially spiritual and cultural capital. America was an idea, but the idea is dead to a large majority of the people that occupy this spiritually desolate territory.
The ideals that I and at least what I have read of the NRO so far, believe in, no longer hold sway with an significant portion of the electorate. The NRC does not represent any coherent set of values or policy save holding the sliver of "power" they already do -- their morals are the same as "The Party" (D), with just different marketing for their corrupt lust for power. The R party is the party of "hold things to the current level of corrupt meaninglessness", TP is "stop all opposition and seize TOTAL power over all!!!". Neither believes in individual liberty, rule of law, limited government .. let alone pride in those ideals.
As I've said before, Trump is the anti-BO -- lawless, no experience in government, narcissistic, no agenda save winning and himself, race pandering (BO-black, Trump-white), "might as right" ... and onward. As the NRO seems to point out, as have I, nothing "conservative" about Trump whatsoever.
However, this is political season makes us one sure promise, as bad as Trump is, if he ends up as the nominee, he will be INFINITELY better than the TP alternatives -- a known criminal and an avowed socialist.
These days, that is what counts as a "sliver lining" I guess!
'via Blog this'
No comments:
Post a Comment