The prophetic Onion
Economists cannot predict the future, but The Onion sure can. In their report on Bush’s inauguration in January 2001, The Onion had Bush reassuring the public that “our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over”.
Now Peter sent me to an Onion video from right after the 2012 election that is eerily prescient:
Let’s see how they do on their VP prediction.
Off topic. Dylan Matthews has a wonderful post skewering the eternal cluelessness of the left. (In the case Google.) He’s actually far to polite.
Because I’ve been doing a lot of Trump bashing, I’d like to give some air time to the other side. Here Dylan Matthews defends Trump against the charge that he is a fascist:
Again, fascism requires stepping outside the system and attacking the democratic structure. As long as that structure itself is handling illiberal attitudes on race, those attitudes don’t themselves constitute a fascist trend.
But the views are still illiberal. To be very, very clear: Donald Trump is a bigot. He is a racist. He is an Islamophobe and a xenophobe. He profits off the hatred and stigmatization of traditionally oppressed groups in American society. That makes him, and his European peers, and racists in other eras in American history, a threat to crucial values of equality and fair treatment, and a threat to the actual human beings he’s targeting and demonizing. And he’s in particular mainstreaming Islamophobia, which is on the rise in recent months, as seen in a recent incident in which a Muslim engineer was harassed at a Fredericksburg, Virginia, civic meeting. “I’m really not sure those views in Fredricksburg would be aired were it not for Trump’s ‘mainstreaming’ of these prejudices,” Feldman says.
Yes, there are lots of differences from the 1930s. It’s a completely different world today, and Trump obviously won’t invade Poland. But Trump does have many fascist tendencies. Perhaps the term ‘demagogue’ is more appropriate.
Each week I’ll try to provide at least one defense of Trump, similar to the one above.
Tags:
19. May 2016 at 16:06
I was really happy to see that Vox article you posted about Yuri. Google Doodle handlers must be crazy!
19. May 2016 at 16:15
“To be very, very clear: Donald Trump is a bigot. He is a racist. He is an Islamophobe and a xenophobe. He profits off the hatred and stigmatization of traditionally oppressed groups in American society.”
-Is any of this true? Or is this just fiction Matthews reads into Trump’s words?
“I’m really not sure those views in Fredricksburg would be aired were it not for Trump’s ‘mainstreaming’ of these prejudices,”
-Obama was accused of being a Muslim long before early 2011.
And if you’re going to link to a defense of Trump, link to Breitbart or some real website.
19. May 2016 at 16:18
The best analogy is Trump=Reagan.
Like Reagan, Trump will cut taxes on rich people, engage in protectionism, push the Fed for an easier monetary policy, run federal deficits, and avoid foreign entanglements.
Entertainers are generally not racist and xenophobes, and both Reagan and Trump are or were entertainers.
19. May 2016 at 16:24
“But Trump does have many fascist tendencies.”
-How many Communist tendencies does Hillary have?
19. May 2016 at 17:10
“Fascism” may be one of those thought-terminating “-isms” along with socialism, communism, capitalism, etc that lose all their power by being applied inappropriately.
q.v. E. Harding above calling Clinton a communist by implication. Bernie Sanders is as much a true socialist as any of the targets that word was thrown at over the past couple decades (i.e. not at all).
That said, there is something to Trump being a fascist. Despite what the historical experts are saying, I think ruling from strength is the key — I don’t think it necessarily requires democratic or un-democratic institutions. Hitler was initially installed via a democratic process, but then removed the democratic process. He was always a fascist — something that is independent of the democratic process. If you can rule from strength via democracy, then that democracy is fascist. If it takes autocracy, then that autocracy is fascist.
But then if you look carefully, Trump is a fascist by even the standards of those historical experts. The thing is that the people who support Trump really are calling for an overthrow of our democratic institutions — they are Republicans who are angry that one branch of government (congress) can’t impose its will on the country. They are fine with the gerrymandered districts that lead to republican dominance of congress; republicans received less than 50% of the popular vote for congress but still have more seats. It is undemocratic — and against the design of the constitution with checks and balances — to believe congress should impose its will on the country.
The republican controlled senate (consisting of states that make up less than half the population) won’t vote on the supreme court nominee that was nominated by a president who won the popular vote and is still in office.
This *is* fascism — it may be within the letter of the law in the constitution, but it overthrows the spirit of democracy. It is a minority wanting to impose its will on the majority through strength (control of institutions).
19. May 2016 at 18:17
“republicans received less than 50% of the popular vote for congress”
-So did Democrats. And Republicans did receive a majority of the vote in the 2014 elections, thus, it is a majority exercising its right to rule.
And Democrats have a way longer history of gerrymandering since 1940.
And fascism is not just another name for constitutional hardball.
19. May 2016 at 20:00
Scott why do you feel compelled to show a defense of trump? It’s like a newspapers attempt when they show both sides between republicans and democrats as being legitimate even though clearly one side is correct (republicans or dems). It’s false equivalence. Trump is wrong and he doesn’t deserve fairness.
19. May 2016 at 20:15
James, I think you missed the joke.
19. May 2016 at 20:29
What’s wrong with the Muslim ban?
19. May 2016 at 20:46
You are right, E. Harding: Trump is clearly not any of those things. A better complaint is that he markets himself so that people who are those things will vote for him.
Not pleasant, but still better than the million further deaths in the Middle East Clinton will bring us.
19. May 2016 at 20:48
@Jason Smith: “Hitler was initially installed via a democratic process, but then removed the democratic process. He was always a fascist…”
In the interest of more precise analysis, we get… really sloppy analysis! Hitler was a Nazi, not a fascist. If you don’t know the difference, Hannah Arendt’s book on totalitarianism is a good place to start.
19. May 2016 at 22:16
I’m horrified by the Confederatephobia in the nation now. Islamophobia doesn’t bother me quite as much, and I really don’t understand why it should.
Sumner expressed disdain for Southern white culture. Why is that ok, but expressing disdain for muslims is not?
I don’t think you’ve worked out a logically consistent angle to this.
19. May 2016 at 23:17
If you block and denigrate reasonable dissent, you will get unreasonable dissent. Treating any concern with possible downsides of immigration, for example, as xenophobic/racist etc practically begs the debate to go feral.
The wages of smug is Trump.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism
But so are the wages of the rhetoric of denunciation trumping the rhetoric of disagreement.
And demagogue is a much, much better term than fascist.
Which is NOT “governing through strength” Jason Smith. Under that definition, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and the Kim dynasty are all fascists.
20. May 2016 at 01:22
Is D.T. ‘more scary’ than H.C.?
‘ But if Hillary makes it into the White House in November, then things will become really scary. Remember how I said that no US President would ever sacrifice a US city in defense of a European one? Well, that assumes a patriotic President, one who loves his country. I don’t believe that the Neocons give a damn about America or the American people, and these crazies might well think that sacrificing one (or many) US cities is well worth the price if that allows them to nuke Moscow.
Any theory of deterrences assumes a “rational actor”, not a psychopathic and hate-filled cabal of “crazies in a basement”. ‘
http://www.unz.com/tsaker/debunking-popular-cliches-about-modern-warfare/
20. May 2016 at 04:04
@Benjamin Cole,
There are some superficial similarities between Reagan and Trump, most obviously that the rest of the world will have a laugh at America.
But Reagan was an inspirational optimist. He knew real hard times in a way that almost no one alive in this country today could appreciate. Trump is a demagogic fear-monger. 180 degrees apart.
One reason I love Sumner is that he is not inclined to indulge people who grouse abut how everything sucks and is getting worse.
But this is the zeitgeist. We’re all victims now. Trump has picked up this stick and wields it better than the other complainers.
20. May 2016 at 04:16
I agree that Hitler comparisons are usually overwrought.
It is interesting, however, that Ivana Trump said that Trump used to keep a book of Hitler’s speeches by the bed.
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-ex-wife-once-said-he-kept-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-2015-8
20. May 2016 at 04:17
James Elizondo not getting the simplest jokes. Jason Smith thinking that separation of powers, representative democracy and federalism is fascism – when it’s exactly the opposite. I have to say the Trump hate team train is especially weak this time. Only the notorious anti-Semite, who constantly lies about his father being Jewish, is luckily missing this time.
20. May 2016 at 04:19
Someone just for fun should ask Trump his views on Adolph Hitler. Does he admire him like he does Putin and Kimg Jong-un?
I’ve never heard of a dictator yet, that he doesn’t admire. He even praised the Chinese government for Tinanmen Square.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/432043/donald-trump-praised-tiananmen-square-massacre
If he doesn’t admire him then why not? In what way is Kim Jong admirable that Hitler wasn’t
It would be an interesting conversation.
20. May 2016 at 04:59
Lorenzo said:
“If you block and denigrate reasonable dissent, you will get unreasonable dissent. Treating any concern with possible downsides of immigration, for example, as xenophobic/racist etc practically begs the debate to go feral.”
And that’s it in a nutshell.
The alt-right, for example, consists mostly of former standard libertarians who discovered Charles Murray or Steve Sailer’s ideas. And then, more importantly, learned how terribly these people – and hundreds of other brave scientists/intellectuals who were doing exactly what we’ve always professed to want from our scientists/intellectuals – were treated.
Maybe America is a European, Christian nation, period, like some on the far right say.
But if not, if it’s about some idea, then it’s about this:
“We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
…It is our responsibility to leave the people of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant as we are. If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before.
…It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.”
I don’t know how to roll back PC and make speech free, in practical terms, in the US again. But folks like Trump are a start.
20. May 2016 at 05:13
Ben Cole:
“Entertainers are generally not racist and xenophobes, and both Reagan and Trump are or were entertainers.”
You must not have read Trump’s memoir, “Dreams From My Teutonic Father”, wherein he whines aloud for 1,400 pages about his obsession w/ his 1/2 Teutonism, and whether he’s authentically Teutonic enough, etc.
20. May 2016 at 05:19
Gene, you said:
“In the interest of more precise analysis, we get… really sloppy analysis! Hitler was a Nazi, not a fascist. If you don’t know the difference, Hannah Arendt’s book on totalitarianism is a good place to start.”
Please don’t believe everything you read. I like this definition better, and really speaks to Hitler and Trump in his desire to purge the illegals and keep the Muslims out. Trump is a classic fascist and of course Hitler was too:
Robert Paxton says that fascism is “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
And, in spite of the ignorance of the subject, fascism is right wing totalitarianism. Ihor Kolomoyski, the bigoted billionaire with dual Ukraine/Israel citizenship is a fascist for seeking the fusion of Nazis and Jewish people to fight Muslims. Jewish people in Europe ignore the man and we should ignore Trump.
20. May 2016 at 06:33
Dang it!
20. May 2016 at 06:35
Gary, is the modern civil rights movement Fascist? They fit every bit of that criteria except the desire for external expansion. And they’re actually powerful enough to curb speech…
(luckily only it spaces where it doesn’t matter so much – like Harvard and Yale), extract privileges under the threat of violence (you see Ferguson and Baltimore?), etc.
That bit about “uneasy but effective collab with traditional elites” had me chuckling about the image of Bernie getting overwhelmed by BLM protesters.
But this “is he a Fascist” game is incredibly stupid.
Milton Friedman wasn’t one.
But who else, among famous, influential political thinkers, checks none of those boxes?
Cheerleading gets you famous, gets you elected. And cheerleaders are all a little bit Fascist.
20. May 2016 at 06:39
“The alt-right, for example, consists mostly of former standard libertarians who discovered Charles Murray or Steve Sailer’s ideas.”
Don’t forget the Manosphere: RedPill (The Rational Male), PUA (Heartiste, Roosh), MGTOW, and Christian (Dalrock). It’s the biggest feeder into the alt-right today.
Taking the Red Pill opened Manospherians to the true nature of women, which contradicted every single thing told to them their entire lives (just “be yourself” or “be a nice guy”).
When the scales fell from their eyes, they wondered what other BS they’d been fed.
Alt-Right = Sex Realism + Race Realism
In Trump, both elements have come together in a comically (cosmically?) perfect way. Watch Trump use his inborn PUA skills to make the entire Megyn Kelly kerfuffle
vanish:
BluePill males either (1) watched with mouths agape or (2) wept. RedPillers said, “This man knows what’s what.”
20. May 2016 at 07:31
IMHO, “so and so is a fascist” accusations pretty much all boil down to definitional food fights that benefit no one, since no one can agree on what “fascist” exactly means. Some people like Eco’s definition, because Eco is smart and articulate, but you can’t count on your listeners being familiar with it or agreeing.
I’d say it’s better to stick with whatever the offensive qualities are that strike you as Fascist – e.g. “Seth Meyer plans to build up worship of the nation-state as a substitute for rational thought” or “Amy Schumer plans to transfer wealth to her crony capitalist allies in exchange for political support.”
20. May 2016 at 08:35
Good to see you’re finally coming around.
“Donald Trump is a bigot. He is a racist. He is an Islamophobe and a xenophobe.”
Fascist, bigot, racist, -phobe, words that have lost all meaning. Let’s analyze -phobe, because you disagree with leftists on an issue, you must be afraid of it to the point of having a phobic mental disorder.
Next, racist, sexist, because you acknowledge the obvious reality that people have genetic differences that are meaningful and you don’t hold as an article of faith that everyone is born entirely equal and can be molded however the blank slatists would like, you are an evil person and must be persecuted.
Bigot/Fascist/racist/-phobe = someone that disagrees with the left. These terms are simply meaningless rhetorical bullets.
20. May 2016 at 08:44
Gene, You said:
A better complaint is that he markets himself so that people who are those things will vote for him.”
Yup.
Massimo, If we banned Confederate immigration then who would vote for Trump?
Postkey, You said:
“Remember how I said that no US President would ever sacrifice a US city in defense of a European one?”
You can make a good argument for staying in NATO, and also for leaving NATO. There are no good arguments for Trump’s foreign policy views, which could trigger a war. War is most likely to occur if the US is formally in NATO, but wrongly perceived as to be not willing to defend other NATO members. That miscalculation is most likely under Trump.
Mike, Why shouldn’t he keep Hitler’s speeches by his bed? His house is so big that he might not be able to find them when needed, unless they are close at hand.
Brendan, You said:
“I don’t know how to roll back PC and make speech free, in practical terms, in the US again. But folks like Trump are a start.”
Is this a joke? You do know that Trump wants to change the libel laws to make it easier for Trump to sue those who disagree with him, don’t you? Is that what free speech means? Or does it mean beating up anti-Trump protesters? Or does it mean praising people like Putin? Yes, Trump is really committed to the 1st Amendment.
20. May 2016 at 10:17
“Is this a joke? You do know that Trump wants to change the libel laws to make it easier for Trump to sue those who disagree with him, don’t you? Is that what free speech means? Or does it mean beating up anti-Trump protesters? Or does it mean praising people like Putin?”
-Well, yes. Hardly anybody else praises Putin in America, so this is free speech. Beating up protestors violating Trump’s free speech also enhances Trump’s free speech, as well as that of his supporters. And giving the press a little taste of accountability also strengthens free speech, as it reduces reporters’ will to distort the speech of the people they interview.
“Alt-Right = Sex Realism + Race Realism”
-Bingo.
“If we banned Confederate immigration then who would vote for Trump?”
-New Yorkers outside Manhattan.
“That miscalculation is most likely under Trump.”
-Really? Trump exudes strength far more than Barack Obama.
20. May 2016 at 12:51
Nigel Farage of UKIP and Marine Le Pen of the National Front both think that Trump is going too far with his proposed Muslim travel ban.
Marine Le Pen, who is widely considered a far-right politician in the US and worldwide. Many Americans used her and similar politicians as examples of how the US is more tolerant than European countries.
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/10/politics/donald-trump-european-politicians/
20. May 2016 at 13:07
Really nobody knows what the F*** Donald would act as President. His campaign is certainly not about policies and at times I think Trump would be interested in sending 3 AM tweets insults at Rosie O’Donnell than actually doing President things. (h/t Ross Douthat) At times he certainly does seem out of touch with reality (his QVC victory speech on March about non-existent Trump steaks still is the weirdest thing in this election cycle if any cycle.) He comes across as a comic version of Mussolini but if a foreign said the wrong thing, I do wonder how he would react.
20. May 2016 at 13:12
“I think Trump would be interested in sending 3 AM tweets insults at Rosie O’Donnell than actually doing President things.”
-Google “President Ash Carter” or “Cool clock, Ahmed”.
20. May 2016 at 13:47
Big Al:
“In Trump, both elements have come together in a comically (cosmically?) perfect way. Watch Trump use his inborn PUA skills to make the entire Megyn Kelly kerfuffle”
1) Donald Trump isn’t a realist; he is just the epitome of ‘principals over principles.’
2) “inborn PUA skills.” Uhuh. This sort of talk doesn’t help dissuade me that Trump-lovers are habitual losers in life who are trying to ‘win’ vicariously through Trump. No sentiment drives his base more than insecurity, that much is plain.
There’s no tact or skill to his remarks. He’s just one of those people that talks before he thinks (not that he thinks after he talks). He rarely never makes an argument that isn’t an ad hominem. That’s why appeals so much to failures. When you’re high point in life was giving swirlies to the kids who would later make 20X your salary in junior high, before you settled down with your dead-end, mindless, working class job and overweight wife and half-literate children, you might get excited to see a guy like Trump, who acts an aggressive junior high student, shouting profanities and driveling about ‘winning’ like a coked up Charlie Sheen.
And if Harding is right and it’s all a ploy to get into the white house, well why on earth would I want someone who would do anything to get in the white house, in the white house?
20. May 2016 at 15:18
@Benjamin Cole
Exactly my thoughts, too.
@Brian Donohue
The strategy of challengers is always the same: Painting the current situation very bleak while giving a positive and optimistic outlook – as long as they are elected. There’s really not much difference between Trump and Reagan here. Hell even their slogans are the same: Make America Great Again.
If anything than Reagan was way more conservative than Trump regarding many aspects. He was a pretty aggressive hard-liner. For example when he kept calling the Soviet Union “Evil Empire”. A Ronald Reagan today would be crucified by the media in no time.
@Mark
That might be an option in your childish fantasy world but in reality it’s not. You can only choose between Hillary and Trump.
20. May 2016 at 15:36
He knew real hard times in a way that almost no one alive in this country today could appreciate. Trump is a demagogic fear-monger. 180 degrees apart.
The country as a whole was much less affluent. The Reagan’s were small town petit bourgeois, likely more impecunious that many wage earners. That having been said, they likely were not that far below the median. Not sure about his parents or brother, but Reagan himself got through the Depression with little injury.
Better examples would be Robert Dole (whose family had to move into its basement and rent out the rest of the house and who lived in a county which has had declining population since 1930) and Pat Nixon, whose family was in truck farming. The Ryan children buried their mother in 1926 and their ailing father in 1930. When they took over the farm, the Depression was underway; the three Ryan children were between 17 and 22 years of age.
20. May 2016 at 15:42
You do know that Trump wants to change the libel laws to make it easier for Trump to sue those who disagree with him,
An NBC News affiliate doctored an audiotape to injure the reputation of a private citizen in Orlando named George Zimmerman. They did this quite deliberately and self-consciously. They did this when they had reason to believe he would be subject to a jury trial. There is no congenial explanation of their conduct. They still were not liable under our cockeyed defamation law.
20. May 2016 at 15:44
This sort of talk doesn’t help dissuade me that Trump-lovers are habitual losers in life who are trying to ‘win’ vicariously through Trump.
If it helps you feel better, Mark, go with that. But tell it to your therapist. The rest of us don’t get paid to listen to you.
20. May 2016 at 15:45
“Alt-Right = Sex Realism + Race Realism”
No, a segment of the alt-right (the Unz crew) is like that. The Wick Allison crew, the Rockford crew, and the von Mises crew do not traffick in that.
20. May 2016 at 15:47
The alt-right, for example, consists mostly of former standard libertarians who discovered Charles Murray or Steve Sailer’s ideas.
That’s not a description of the Rockford or von Mises Institutes, who predate Sailer by about a decade.
20. May 2016 at 16:47
I’ve concluded the chances of Trump winning are ~60%. Hillary has shown no tact or skill while campaigning and it pains any reasonable person to see her on TV.
20. May 2016 at 17:58
Christian: “That might be an option in your childish fantasy world but in reality it’s not. You can only choose between Hillary and Trump.”
And why again is Trump better than Hillary? Oh, right, because he said something that I’m suppose to take him at his word for, despite the fact that I’m also supposed to dismiss all the idiotic and totalitarian things he says as him just doing whatever it takes to win. Do you seriously not grasp the contradiction there?
I suppose you also don’t grasp the fact that we only suffer the ‘inevitability’ of horrible choices like this because people like you persitently vote for the worst candidates you can find in the primaries. And remind me again, what’s the essential difference between Hillary and Trump? One wants to raise the min wage, leading to higher labor costs and prices for the things I buy going up; the other wants to cut the labor supply, driving up labor costs and leading to prices for the things I buy going up.
Art Deco: “If it helps you feel better, Mark, go with that. But tell it to your therapist. The rest of us don’t get paid to listen to you.”
No, it quite depresses me that idiots and failures at life have the power to impose their bad ideas on me. I thought this was why sitcoms and professional wrestling existed: to distract them so they didn’t bother the grown ups.
20. May 2016 at 19:09
“If we banned Confederate immigration then who would vote for Trump?”
ok, he got me. Sumner is responding to my counter programming (Confederatephobia) with counter counter programming (Confederate immigration).
20. May 2016 at 19:48
“driving up labor costs and leading to prices for the things I buy going up”
-So you think deporting the illegals boosts the wages of unskilled labor? That’s not exactly an argument against the Donald.
20. May 2016 at 20:28
XVO, you said:
“Bigot/Fascist/racist/-phobe = someone that disagrees with the left. These terms are simply meaningless rhetorical bullets.”
I gave a precise definition of fascism. No, this has nothing to do with the left. It has everything to do with the rottenness of the far right, of which you probably claim membership.
You probably love Kolomoyski as well. That is retarded, and it represents screws being loose in the makeup of the fascist. Oh, and do you get paid by Netanyahu, XVO? Or are you do you just have a personal passion for hate?
20. May 2016 at 20:43
“-So you think deporting the illegals boosts the wages of unskilled labor? That’s not exactly an argument against the Donald.”
Uh yeah it is, for the same reason it’s an argument against minimum wage and protectionism. When prices go up because production declines, people are not getting wealthier.
20. May 2016 at 21:17
This time, what Mark said: it works by empowering the losers to win vicariously. A variant of panem et circenses. A mudwrestling sitcom with real stuff at stake.
Unfortunately, the part about making the losers feel empowered is exactly how the Nazis got themselves elected too. (no, not claiming Trump is one ideologically, just that he’s liberally borrowing their methods).
The best exhibition of the same principle is in Chinua Achebe’s “Things fall apart”. Here he describes how the British colonialists used the previous underdogs of native societies to undermine the elites. When the losers of society were used as watchdogs by the colonialists, and given powers, two things happened. One, the natural superiority of the elites was put into question, which destroyed their prestige. And two, the now-empowered losers became the British’s most loyal servants. Their power depended on the British. The British guns they were given helped too of course. And that’s how things fell apart.
20. May 2016 at 21:31
@mbka
-That sounds a lot like Merkel and Hillary’s plan to empower the illegals.
20. May 2016 at 22:19
Harding,
nope. That scheme applies to underdogs within a system, not to ones from without. Completely different dynamics.
21. May 2016 at 04:04
The fix is in:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/20/donald-trump-sheldon-adelson-israel-trip-campaign-donation
21. May 2016 at 05:15
HW, You said:
“Many Americans used her and similar politicians as examples of how the US is more tolerant than European countries.”
I used to use that argument, and was obviously wrong.
Mark, Excellent comment.
21. May 2016 at 10:37
Yes, it is hard to defend Trump because he is an odd dude. He is an amateur in politics, which I mean he is addressing issues for the first time in publis while running for President and this is bound to make him appear—-to put it bluntly—stupid.
But I dont think he is stupid in the normal political way we think of the term. He will increasingly be more consistent as time goes on. Just my opinion—what else can it be.
But the moronic aspect of many of your own comments relates to slander. “Rascist, homophobe, Islamophobe, tradeophobe, fascist, sexist, is just so much jack–s name calling that it is irritating.
You are a real amateur as a political commenter, my opinion again of course, and your seeming inability to see what is inherently corrupt about politics makes you obsess over the loudest mouth in the room. When I say to corrupt, it is our human nature, so I am willing to accept it. But there are limits which the people must check.
The Sanders Trump phenomenon is a remarkable force. To me it is a message from the majority of the American people that they are pissed off and the corruption game as gone too far. So we are trying to take away their power. Maybe the true politicians will begin to realize they need to back off a bit.
And if you don’t what I mean about corruption then I don’t know what to tell you. But foaming at the mouth about Trump is just so much blather and makes you comment about politics being for morons something that is said by you when talking to a mirror.
21. May 2016 at 11:31
Mike, I agree that my political posts are dumb. But let me ask you this. Why do you insist on lying about what I say? Why do you insist on making up phantom quotes which I have never said, or even hinted at?
Isn’t that also a form of corruption? Shouldn’t you apologize for doing that? Or are you like Trump, who never likes to apologize?
And let me ask you another question. Where are the intelligent defenses of Trump. I see intelligent defenses of Hillary. I don’t agree with those arguments (I detest Hillary), but they are out there. In contrast, intelligent people almost universally condemn Trump. I’ve read hundreds of comments over here, and not one person has provided an intelligent defense of Trump. Why is that?
21. May 2016 at 11:43
Apparently I have confused your links and even maybe your commentators quotes with your own quotes. I guess I need to read more carefully. No need to insult me, although I don’t mind. I apologize.
Regarding my own thoughts on this election cycle—-Right after I wrote my comment to you, I went to WSJ and read the opinion piece by Holman Jenkins, who I tend to agree with almost all the time.
If you have read it that is very close to what I was attempting to communicate (in between misquoting you :-))
Mike
21. May 2016 at 12:11
Sumner, I ask you again: what does an intelligent defense look like? I voted for Trump because he was best on foreign policy and immigration, while the other candidates seemed to have no clue.
BTW, I am an intelligent person.
21. May 2016 at 15:49
Scott,
I don’t think your political posts are dumb. This is especially true when you’re pointing out the obvious about Trump. Unfortunately, the obvious isn’t so obvious to many.
You’re performing a national service, even if in a relatively small way. I’m glad you’re using your platform to oppose the most dangerous US politician in my lifetime, if not of US history.
I’m concerned that Trump’s success has already moved us further down the road to becoming a banana republic, and worse, he’s even doing relatively well in the polls.
21. May 2016 at 17:17
@HW + @sumner,
Serious question: why should US + Europe want to be “tolerant” of mass immigration from complete foreign and hostile religions, ethnicities, and cultures? Why should say, France, want to erase its Frenchness. To quote Finkielkraut:
“I am pained to see that the French mode of European civilization is threatened. France is in the process of transforming into a post-national and multicultural society. It seems to me that this enormous transformation does not bring anything good.”
Japan is arguably far more extreme and less “tolerant” than Marine Le Pen or Donald Trump. Actually pretty much all nations on Earth are like that. China is certainly an order of magnitude less tolerant than a Marine Le Pen. Same wih India or Israel or the Gulf States.
I know Mexican ethnic nationalists, who are wildy passionate about Mexico->US immigration. But they visit France, and these are brown Mestizo Mexicans, and they are horrified by what they see and they completely support Marine Le Pen.
@Mark,
“There’s no tact or skill to [Trump’s] remarks. He’s just one of those people that talks before he thinks”
That’s what it looks like to the untrained observer. He wouldn’t have won the Republican primary if he spoke with no tact or skill.
To quote Scott Adams of Dilbert fame on Trump:
“I realized early that what looked like the random behavior of a clown to people who were untrained, was almost pitch perfect persuasion.”
21. May 2016 at 19:21
Scott,
for the record I also think you are performing a public service here. The majority of your commenters now is hostile to you and your points of view. But your views are the intelligent ones, and the ones deserving exposure. So you perform the service of grinding, daily pushback of forces that ought to be pushed back. I salute you for this. BTW I do not believe your hostile commenters represent the wider population. The hopefully reasonable majority is often silent. But it needs to read enough reason, like your blog, or else the field is left completely to the vociferously insane.
Massimo,
I am tired of reading about Scott Adams’ supposed insight that Trump is great because he’s a great “persuader”. Well yes, being a great salesman in politics makes him a great … demagogue. So was Joseph Goebbels with his trademark insight that the lie must be big, and by repeating it, the lie becomes the truth. I just can’t see what’s admirable about that. Plenty of demagogues have won elections convincingly and ruined their countries. What’s admirable about that?
When you read Scott Adams his sympathy for Trump clearly shines through. He didn’t see Trump’s appeal early and warned about it. He saw it early and gushed about it. And pretty much every single other apologist for Trumps’ methods also does love his “program”, albeit often couched in some smug deniability cloak. And I can’t stand reading any more Dilbert comics without thinking of their smug author.
And, Harding, assuming you are as intelligent as you claim so yourself: Plenty smart people fell for the Nazis too. And plenty of ordinary folks saw clearly though them. It’s a question of common decency. Not of IQ.
21. May 2016 at 19:28
“That’s what it looks like to the untrained observer. He wouldn’t have won the Republican primary if he spoke with no tact or skill.”
On the contrary. Tact and skill are completely unnecessary to winning the GOP primary. Flare and anger and a knack for flattery seem to be the prerequisites.
21. May 2016 at 19:51
“Plenty smart people fell for the Nazis too.”
-Ah, but Trump is not a Nazi, in fact, just the opposite. You could accuse Rubio of being a Nazi with some correctness, though, given his nutty Ukraine policy.
“Flare and anger and a knack for flattery seem to be the prerequisites.”
-Rmoney had little flare and anger. He was a total loser come the general, though. Trump, fortunately, is a much stronger candidate than Rmoney.
“to oppose the most dangerous US politician in my lifetime, if not of US history”
-Tom Cotton? Hillary Clinton? Richard Burr?
21. May 2016 at 19:57
Seriously, anti-Trumpers, if you believe Trump is dangerous, argue for it. I have not yet seen any argument at all from you that Trump would be more dangerous than Hillary Clinton. Put up or shut up.
21. May 2016 at 22:17
@mbka
“Well yes, being a great salesman in politics makes him a great … demagogue. So was Joseph Goebbels”
Politicians are supposed to sell their platform to voters. Competing in elections _is_ salesmanship. The platform that sells the most votes wins.
And a demagogue is just the opponent that you don’t like.
Those Nazi comparisons are really ridiculous.
@Mark
“Tact and skill are completely unnecessary to winning the GOP primary.”
These are sore loser comments. Of course winning a hotly contentious election takes some kind of skill.
22. May 2016 at 01:47
Massimo,
“And a demagogue is just the opponent that you don’t like.”
as opposed to the opponent that I … like? I don’t particularly like Hillary or Sanders either, or most of the republicans that ran. Why do you think that I and so many others believe that Trump is on an entirely different level of dangerous?
I am very tired of the line that “all politicians are the same”, “all politicians are liars” etc. None are perfect, but some are truly bad. Some have political positions that I don’t support – but they still live on the same planet, and share my values, goals, to a great extent. Trump has an entire value system, and ethos, and goals, that I find unspeakable. Some make promises that will be hard to keep. Trump makes promises that for sure I must hope and pray he will not keep. If you don’t see a difference here then I can’t help you.
The Trump experience has already been made in so many countries. Why is America so eager to learn the same lesson again?
22. May 2016 at 09:11
I’m calling it: I’m With Her! is the new Jeb! Both are very low-energy.
“Why do you think that I and so many others believe that Trump is on an entirely different level of dangerous?”
-I dunno. We’re asking you.
22. May 2016 at 10:02
mbka,
What exactly do you find so unspeakable about Trump’s value system and goals that is unspeakable? The idea that the interests of American citizens and workers should come ahead of the interests of illegal aliens and foreign workers? Or the idea that perhaps the US should have a stricter vetting system for immigrants from certain Middle Eastern Muslim countries (as opposed to Indonesia, for example) based on the higher per capita likelihood that they will perpetrate acts of terror?
22. May 2016 at 10:05
Trump makes promises that for sure I must hope and pray he will not keep.
Examples?
(yeah, I forgot to proofread “unspeakable.” sue me.)
22. May 2016 at 10:09
@mbka
Sure, there’s a difference between a bad politician and a __really__ bad politician.
Hugo Chavez was much, much worse than Obama or a potential Hillary.
And some politicians are relatively honest, while others lie more. And some politicians like like lawyers while Trump lies like a reality tv contestant.
“Trump has an entire value system, and ethos, and goals, that I find unspeakable”
Can you try to articulate what is so terrible about the prospect of Trump?
I’m guessing this is the same type of outrage and horror that people also direct at French academic philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. I’ve asked before, but what are your thoughts on Finkielkraut? I love both Finkielkraut and Trump.
I think a Trump presidency will be positive and healthy for the US and for the world. I’m not being cute or snarky. I seriously believe this as a long-time Reagan fan, Milton Friedman fan, and minimal government conservative. I’m not trying to be obnoxious, I could be wrong, maybe you are right and terrible things I don’t foresee will happen, but I don’t see that.
22. May 2016 at 16:09
John S,
Those of us who aren’t fascists or socialists feel that it is not the job of the state to decide what is in our interests, let alone force what it perceives those to be on us, but rather merely to safeguard our rights as individuals.
I decide that it is in my interest to let Mexicans come and work here so I can buy fruits and vegetables cheaper; and in my interest to by cheaper, superior made Japanese cars. Don’t like those things? Fine, you go buy your American picked strawberries and Fords. But neither you nor Donald Trump has any more a right to extort a fee from me or forbid me from trading with foreigners than McDonald’s does a right to outlaw Burger King.
22. May 2016 at 16:13
Oh, and Massimo, can you give me a single policy opinion that Milton Friedman had in common with Donald Trump?
22. May 2016 at 19:33
Mike, People are free to refute my comments about Trump, but so far no one has been able to.
Harding, You said:
“Trump because he was best on foreign policy”
Given that he has not even provided us with a coherent foreign policy, how can you say his is best?
mbka, I assure you that the vast majority of my readers despise Trump. I meet many people, traveling all over the place. Republicans, Dems and Libertarians. I have yet to meet a single Trump supporter. Obviously he has tens of millions of supporters, and he might even win, but they are overwhelming people who are ignorant of public policy issues. The readers of this blog who support Trump are the exception, I’d guess 90% of my readers do not.
Mark, More precisely, a shreiking sphere of white hot anger.
Harding, You said:
“Ah, but Trump is not a Nazi, in fact, just the opposite. You could accuse Rubio of being a Nazi with some correctness, though, given his nutty Ukraine policy.”
Actually you could be accused of being a Nazi, given that you defended Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland.
Massimo, You said:
“And a demagogue is just the opponent that you don’t like”
Actually, the sort of person who gets taken in by a demagogue is there sort of person who doesn’t know what the term means—someone like you.
22. May 2016 at 19:40
Massimo,
Reagan and Friedman would radically oppose Trump. You obviously either know nothing about them, and/or are only a “fan” in the most superficial of ways.
Your comments on another post indicating that you want to establish a new PC standard in which bigotry is acceptable is truly pathetic.
You are clearly a traitor to all that has ever been American in ideals and you are the example of the typical sort of airheaded lemming that is ripe fruit for harvest by conmen peddling hatred and general division.
I want a Trump supporter to point to one example when such an approach improved a nation, or even the lot of supporters of such scoundrels, as opposed to the catastrophic effects that any fool should be able to predict.
22. May 2016 at 20:37
@Scott Freelander,
“Reagan and Friedman would radically oppose Trump. You obviously either know nothing about them, and/or are only a “fan” in the most superficial of ways.”
I’ve been a _huge_ fan of Reagan, Friedman, Ayn Rand, Margaret Thatcher, etc. I wear t-shirts of all of the above. I honestly am not in the economics field, but I’m informally a big libertarian.
Milton Friedman fully opposed applying anti racial-discrimination laws to private parties. He was labeled as a racist and bigot for this. He’s no longer alive for the modern left to attack him, but can you imagine if he was alive and proposed allowing private racial discrimination by private companies, schools, banks, etc?
“You are clearly a traitor to all that has ever been American in ideals and you are the example of the typical sort of airheaded lemming that …”
Explain. What important ideals do I violate? I can trace my ancestry to the American Revolution and take great pride in that.
The US was founded as a libertarian nation of white settlers.
@Mark,
“can you give me a single policy opinion that Milton Friedman had in common with Donald Trump?”
– Immigration restriction.
– The Trump tax plan, endorsed by libertarian economists who don’t have an ax to grind.
– Trump’s supreme court picks would certainly be aligned with Friedman. This is one of the most important tasks of the president.
Beyond that, Hillary Clinton’s positions are more extremely opposite of Friedman than Trump. Hillary promotes massive expansions in scope of almost all government.
@Mark,
“I decide that it is in my interest to let Mexicans come and work here so I can buy fruits and vegetables cheaper”
This is an old stock open border quip. Is it also your choice to grant immigrants the array of social services that they eventually receive? Is it your choice to grant their children full citizenship? Anything less would be fascism or socialism? This logic is absurd.
23. May 2016 at 02:09
‘“Only Donald Trump (among the Presidential candidates) has said anything meaningful and critical of U.S. foreign policy.” No, that is not Reince Priebus, chair of the RNC, speaking up in favor of the presumptive Republican nominee. It is Stephen F. Cohen, Emeritus Professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, a contributing editor for The Nation, that most liberal of political journals.’
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/05/22/trumps-five-questions-on-us-foreign-policy/
23. May 2016 at 04:18
Interesting; Scott Freelander is even more deranged than Sumner.
23. May 2016 at 04:38
Mark,
You seem to think that people who deviate even slightly from the tenets of completely unrestricted free trade and/or open borders are either “fascists or socialists.” I find that preposterous.
Here’s David Glasner (from “What’s so Great about Free Trade”):
“Ordinary people seem to understand how closely their well-being is tied to the stability of their employment, which is why people are so viscerally opposed to policies that, they fear, could increase the likelihood of losing their jobs.
To think that an increased chance of losing one’s job in exchange for a slight gain in purchasing power owing to the availability of low-cost imports is an acceptable trade-off for most workers does not seem at all realistic.”
Is David Glasner also a fascist or a socialist?
Regarding unrestricted immigration, here’s Kurt Schuler (longtime contributor to the FreeBanking/Alt-M blog):
“Claiming that people who disagree with you [Bryan Caplan] have a “phobia” stinks. There are quite justifiable reasons for an existing group to be apprehensive when outsiders arrive in large numbers. Think about Robert Putnam’s finding that greater ethnic and racial diversity generally leads to less civic engagement.”
“… you still don’t seem to think there’s much difference between importing 20 million barrels of oil from Russia or Yemen or Nigeria and importing 20 million Russians or Yemenis or Nigerians. People who don’t live in a bubble know better.”
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/05/the_specter_of.html#356849
Is Kurt Schuler also a fascist or a socialist? Come on.
There’s a huge middle ground between “free-market-purist” and “supporter of totalitarianism.” Haven’t you realized that by now?
23. May 2016 at 06:36
Scott Freelander is the Ilya Ehrenburg of market monetarism.
23. May 2016 at 07:40
@John S
“You seem to think that people who deviate even slightly from the tenets of completely unrestricted free trade and/or open borders are either “fascists or socialists.” I find that preposterous.”
This is the heart of the debate. When Freelander accuses any Trump supporter as “clearly a traitor to all that has ever been American in ideals” it’s this emotional outrage that someone dare challenge open border doctrine. Similarly for mbka and Sumner.
Of course, the US was never an open border ethnically neutral nation, the idea is completely absurd.
“Claiming that people who disagree with you [Bryan Caplan] have a “phobia” stinks.”
In a hypothetical two sided argument A vs B, you could so that each side is “phobic” about the other side and “philic” towards their own side. If this were consistent, it would be a reasonable convention. The way one side of the debate has somehow monopolized use of this language, the “phobic” position is turned into a pejorative and only applies to their opponents is absurd. Hence, my accusations of Confederatephobia.
23. May 2016 at 08:20
Actually you could be accused of being a Nazi, given that you defended Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland.
Hitler invaded Austria (without shots fired) and Poland. The Sudetanland and adjacent territories were ceded after a diplomatic conference. Czechoslovakia had seen a very abrupt shift in public opinion toward separatism among ethnic Germans, so ceding the territory was prudent but for a few things: the Czech government had sunk a great deal in the way of resources into military fortifications in the territory in question, there was quite a mess of coal therein, and a disproportionate share of the country’s industrial capacity was there. Absorbing peripheral German populations in Danzig, Memelland, Austria, and the Sudetenland &c was about the least troublesome thing Hitler did in the international field. There was a big constituency in favor of a merger with Germany in Austria and that constituency was a majority in these other loci.
23. May 2016 at 09:47
“Given that he has not even provided us with a coherent foreign policy, how can you say his is best?”
-Because all the others’ were godawful.
Trump’s foreign policy has shifted on some certain points over the years (e.g., the value of overthrowing Middle Eastern dictators), but he has had a consistent foreign policy outline since the 1990s:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-foreign-policy-213546?paginate=false
As for the Sudetenland, see Art Deco’s comment.
“I have yet to meet a single Trump supporter.”
-Proof you are badly out of touch with the GOP base.
23. May 2016 at 14:51
Harding, You said:
“Proof you are badly out of touch with the GOP base.”
Yup, I’m in touch with the smarter people in the GOP, and out of touch with the dummies, if that’s what you mean by “base”.
23. May 2016 at 20:41
Trumpistas,
Here is one of the latest Trump contradictions(lies):
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/donald-trump-climate-change-golf-course-223436
Trump has publicly said that the global warming is a “hoax”, “bullshit” and “pseudoscience”. Yet, he’s actively trying to get permission to get a seawall built to protect his golf course in Ireland from rising sea levels caused by…global warming.
24. May 2016 at 15:28
That scheme applies to underdogs within a system, not to ones from without. Completely different dynamics.
Very funny, laughable comment.
25. May 2016 at 05:55
Scott, Nice one. At this point there’s already so much information on Trump that further criticism is superfluous.