The Irreducible Logic Of An Illogical Choice

I’ve said it before, I’ll no doubt say it again; I don’t like Donald Trump. I discovered my dislike of him in 1986. I kept it going, cordially, even through the 2000s, when many of today’s “resistance” (gag koff choke) were making him reality TV’s most popular personality.

And I like a lot of Trump supporters even less. Not present company of course.

I voted for Scott Walker in 2016 – and still think he was the best person for the job by a Wisconsin mile. I didn’t think Trump had a chance – of staying in the race after caucuses, then of getting anywhere near the nomination, and finally of getting elected. I literally went into shock, on the air, when it became clear he was going to win three years ago.

I figured, best case, we’d get a couple good SCOTUS justices. Two down, maybe another to go, here. If nothing else, I consider him a success for that alone. There’s been more; obliterating ISIS (although this Kurd thing could screw that all up), focusing the nation on illegal immigration, rolling back some of the damage Obama did on foreign policy…

…but of course, he’s spending like a Democrat (and the Democrats, who control the House, which controls appropriations, *could* do something about it, but they won’t, so shush, Dems). Which is going to be a huge problem…someday

Thing is? Given any of the alternatives to Trump? I couldn’t in conscience vote for any of them.

*Every last one* of them at the top of the ticket (except Tulsi Gabbard, and I have as much chance of getting the Democrat nomination as she does) is promising to do to the Bill of Rights what Donald Trump bragged about doing to fictional women; grab it and molest it. A vote for *any* Democrat is a vote for a gutting the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments, for abolishing the Electoral College (making the entire country serfs, paying obeisance to New York and California), for imposing “our best interests” on us exactly the way it’s done in Baltimore, Newark, Chicago, Detroit, or all of California. From sea to crumbling ,dysfunctional, crime-ridden sea. But hey, abortion will be legal until the sixth trimester…

Sorry, Libertarian friends – if you normally vote GOP, a third-party vote is a vote for the Dems. More’s the pity. See you down-ticket, maybe. And all you “withhold my consent” folks? All due respect, but that’s just too precious for me.

So – will I vote Trump? We’ll see.

Will I vote for *any* Democrat who’s actually going to get on a ticket outside of a red Congressional district? I couldn’t do that in any form of conscience that could be reached at the speed of light in my lifetime. I prefer Trump. God help me.

51 thoughts on “The Irreducible Logic Of An Illogical Choice

  1. Pingback: Two Perspectives | Things to Remember, Things to Cherish

  2. If you search back to comments I made leading up to the ’16 elections, you’ll see I was not a fan of Trump and didn’t trust him. I voted for him for the SCOTUS seats, and he’s paid back my gamble nicely.

    He’s also taken on the Chinese, which no one else had the balls to do. He’s reduced the flow of unskilled, low IQ Guatamexidorians and Somali trash getting in to squat out a population of kids to replace Americans. He’s serious about building that wall, and is doing the best he can to get it up. He has packed the federal circuit courts with solid Constitutional conservatives…we’re already reaping the benefits of that.

    Yeah, he’s crude, and he’s rude but hey, I happen to appreciate that in a guy 😉

    I voted last time with some trepidation, I’ll do it next year with no qualms at all.

  3. Mitch, the deficit we face is the Repubs fault, you passed a $1T tax cut for the rich, the issue isn’t spending, we’re spending 33% LESS on discretionary items (sans military and debt service) than under Reagan. The issue is yours, and yours alone. You controlled the Congress, SCOTUS and the Presidency and couldn’t find a solution to sequestration, you spend to bribe (err prop up) farmers because of Trump’s stupid trade wars – your issue, your fault. If you want to end Social Security and Medicare, say so. See how that goes.

    Trump is an existential threat to democracy, it’s not a party thing, His betrayal of the Kurds IS who he IS. His usurpation of power, his lies, IS who he IS. This isn’t a binary choice of Dems/Repubs, it’s a moral choice, and Trump is on the wrong side of it.

    JDM, when EVER did Barack Obama assert he doesn’t have to comply with legal and proper requests from Congress? When did he accuse Paul Ryan of Treason, threaten to investigate the intelligence community for exposing national threats, attempt to use his office to push a subordinated nation into making up dirt about his opponent? Totalitarianism is Trump, plain and simple.

  4. Bosshoss, please tell our SF soldiers who fought beside them that the Kurds aren’t allies. When you pick-up your teeth, say it again. They were PIVOTAL to defeating and certainly shed blood to help kill off ISIS’ caliphate. Sure, it helped them too, but that’s WHY they are allies.

    Bottom line is, Assad hates the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) has committed genocide against them, with Russian help. The Kurds are the lynchpin of those forces and Assad (and Putin) and Erdogan, want them gone. Erdogan doesn’t care much for Assad, but he hates the Kurds more. And Trump is their enabler. We can reasonably debate whether protecting a semi-autonomous Kurdish state will ever be successful in Syria, certainly it won’t in Turkey or Iran, but who do you want to ally with? Those who oppose ISIS, or those who allowed it to surface by pretending “it’s not our problem” (US/Russia/Iran), allowed it to arise because they are hated in their own country and lost control (Assad), or those sort of approve of it (Turkey)? As Turkey, by contrast, backed the idea of Wahabism (the Caliphate) if not the fact. They have moved toward Islamic Fundamentalism under Erdogan. Turkey may well become a fully totalitarian, fundamentalist Sunni state, if that’s your vision of an ally, we have greatly different definitions. Turkey is playing both sides, and worst, appears to have Trump dangling by a string.

  5. Last election, the choice was between allowing The Lizard Queen to ascend to the Rose Garden Throne where she and her dynasty would rule forever, or letting an orange orangutan rampage around the Oval Office and throw Tweets like feces.

    This election, the choice is worse.

  6. His betrayal of the Kurds IS who he IS.

    And lo! *Now* these c*cksuckers are warhawks.

    Jezuz.

  7. …letting an orange orangutan rampage around the Oval Office and throw Tweets like feces.

    lol. That’s maybe the best description of whats going on that I have seen, JD.

    But we are remiss not to observe, it is the leftist reprobates that are throwing actual feces at people.

  8. Paddy whacked, you seem to forget that your black messiah added $21 trillion to the deficit by coddling illegal aliens, our country’s sworn enemies and a myriad of other feel good do nothing programs. I suspect that as the IG reports come out, a lot of other stuff will come out about slush money that the Democrats grab for themselves or give to racist organizations like Planned Murderhood or the NEA, knowing it comes back to them as campaign donations. And, since you brought up Social Security, it was rat bastard Democrats that pilfered it by moving it to the General Fund, then taxed the benefits, so they could spend it on their wasteful schemes. So spare us your self righteous indignation, you freaking hypocrite. If you had an ounce of integrity, this should piss you off. But then, you lefties have no integrity, because you need government to tell you what to do and how much of your money you can keep.

  9. Trump abandoned the Kurds. Obama abandoned the Poles and Hungarians when he wouldn’t include them in the anti-missile defense network. It could be argued that both did it as a way to try and make Europe share the costs of supporting both.

    Or, it could just be argued.

  10. Agreeing as I do with the vast majority of this post…

    The phrase “When you are rich, they let you grab them by the p***y.”…. Which is what he actually said, implies a certain permissiveness, no?

  11. For those who don’t “like” him. So what? Results count. Most of those I know who don’t like him like his policies. He’s a street fighter-that’s good, because the opposition does the same. We finally get a president who takes on the media unlike most wimpy Republicans, plus, as said, the Supreme Court picks, the Appeals Court picks, the border issues, the Chinese, ISIS, taxes, regulations, ect., …stop me when there’s something not to like. His demeanor? Jeez..who cares?

  12. I can’t believe people who voted for Obama want to bring up guilt by association. Bill Ayres is a confessed terrorist (“guilty as Hell, free as a bird”). Or perhaps we should begin with Tony Rezko? Or Obama’s close ties to the corrupt Daly Chicago Machine? Blago tried to sell Obama’s senate seat to the highest bidder, for God’s sake.

  13. And I see that after years of demanding that we abandon our Iraqi allies, Peev is now in favor of “endless wars for endless peace.”

  14. “Trump is an existential threat to democracy”
    Apparently he did this by getting elected. The people who tried to subvert the electoral college and called for impeachment before Trump took office are the champions of democracy, I suppose.
    “when EVER did Barack Obama assert he doesn’t have to comply with legal and proper requests from Congress? ”
    Trump’s position is that the requests and subpoenas are not legal and proper, the same position Obama took when he wanted to ignore subpoenas. The courts will probably favor Trump’s interpretation, because Pelosi hasn’t got an impeachment vote.
    “Totalitarianism is Trump, plain and simple.”
    Peev doesn’t know what the word “totalitarianism” means, other than a bad thing.
    Totalitarianism, form of government that theoretically permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of individual life to the authority of the state. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini coined the term totalitario in the early 1920s to characterize the new fascist state of Italy, which he further described as “all within the state, none outside the state, none against the state.”
    It isn’t Trump who is threatening to confiscate weapons. It isn’t Trump who has made it a crime to call a male human being a man, or to use plastic straws. It isn’t Trump who is banning and deplatforming his political opponents.
    That would be you guys, peev.

  15. So now the libs have driven themselves so mad with Trump hatred they are allied with the hated neocons against Trump. They are now in complete agreement with Doug Feith, Dick Cheney, the late John McCain, William Kristol and Jonah Goldberg: The libs now believe that US troops are necessary to stabilize the ME, and without that stabilization, the ME will generate terrorists and invading armies.
    Fifteen years ago the libs would have stoned you to death for saying that, if they could have gotten away with it. I mean that literally.
    Back then the libs believed that the US was a destabilizing force in the ME and the Muslim world. We were told that the CIA made the mujahadin in Afghanistan that spawned Bin Laden, and that the continued presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia inspired the 9/11 hijackers.

  16. I voted last time with some trepidation, I’ll do it next year with no qualms at all.

    I didn’t vote with any trepidation. In a choice between Felonia von Pantsuit and Orange Man there wasn’t any option.

    One thing I like about Trump is that he doesn’t give Leftists the “respect” they think they deserve. He calls them horrible people because they are horrible people. That drives Leftists insane because being morally superior to everyone else is their default position, and because the genteel GOP establishment never challenged their deplorable morals and behavior they’ve never had to defend their policies. Trump doesn’t pull punches and calls them immoral reprobates because that’s how they behave.

  17. Trump was near the bottom of my choices in the primaries. Never thought for a minute he could win the election. My opinion of the Evil Harpie was so low there was no way I could vote for her or not vote for Trump just in case. When he won my attention was turned to his policies. Really believed he would be as liberal as everyone feared. After the SC nomination and the beginning of regulations rollback I raised my eyebrows and said “hmmm…!” Since then I have been rarely disappointed, if ever. After the open insanity of the dems became their daily MO I stopped feeling ANY dismay for Trumps MO and learned to love it. HE FIGHTS! Every time he thumbs them in the eye I cheer. If his uncouth behavior gets me more conservative policy then let him slobber for the next 5 years. I genuinely can’t understand the reluctance to support him. For goodness sake, what IS the alternative? Not one of his so called conservative predecessors could deliver what he has. I would really like a list of his fatal flaws that disqualifies him. They had better be numerous and good and have nothing to do with personality.

  18. As I’ve mentioned multiple times before I was even less enthusiastic than Swiftee in voting for Trump but not only will I vote for him this time. I’m going to volunteer and organize so we can flip MN into the red category. And will paddy bot respond to any of the turds he dropped or is Mitch going to have to ban his new screen name because he is to much of a intellectual nitwit to engage in any debate?

  19. “These are great people..Don’t forget that’s their territory..We have to help them..Tens of thousands of Kurds died fighting ISIS..We have not forget, we don’t forget, I don’t forget.” ~ Donald Trump 2018

    Turkey, Iran, and Syria are all client states to greater or lesser degree of Russia. Russia has never before successfully gathered so much influence and control in the Northern Middle East as it has now. Russia power outside the Bosporus has never been so robust. 

    The withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Agreement and subsequent maximum pressure campaign against Iran increasing looks like a feint while the total sell-out of American and other western interests was in fact underway. 

    Is this stupidity, incompetence, or treason?

  20. The one thing that most bothers me about the field of Democrat candidates for President, is none of them have articulated a vision for America in the world. Are we the World’s Policeman, sending in troops to kill people who annoy our friends? Are we the World’s Nanny, sending in troops to rebuild after disasters, ensure free elections, enforce child labor laws? Are we the World’s Santa, giving money to everybody?

    Even Emery has trouble articulating a vision of how America should act. Stupidity, incompetence, and treason are bad, agreed. So what’s your alternative? What’s your grand, coherent strategy? Where to send troops, who to bomb, for how long, to achieve what objective? And perhaps most importantly, on whose say-so: should the President wait for Congress to declare war before dispatching the ships and planes, or should the President invade and bomb whomever pissed him off that day?

    It’s hard to take seriously an armchair quarterback who criticizes every play but has no plan of his own. Democrat candidates might make inroads with voters if they expanded their campaign platform beyond “more free stuff.”

  21. When you think of all the people Trump has betrayed in his presidency and his life including all of his wives, it’s all the more impressive that he has never betrayed Putin.

  22. Lighter commenting today because unfortunately it’s my turn to be Director of Homeland Security.

  23. Ive always wondered about idiots like emetic and patsy_girl_whatever, do they think they are “winning” in some way by posting lies on center-right blogs? Do they think they are helping the dhimmi’s?

    Is it just that they think they “owned us” with their posts? They obviously both lie consistently, what do they get from it, why do they do it?

    You’re not changing any votes, and if you have any effect here it is merely to entertain us (when I bother to read your drivel, which I rarely do).

    Have fun bozos, it amuses the hell out of me what you choose to waste your time doing

  24. At least, on the right, there are reasonable discussions of what the foreign policy of the United States should be. Internationalist versus nationalist, free trade versus protectionist. There is no coherent discussion of foreign policy, or anything else, on the Left; as Emery’s quotes in this thread illustrate.
    There is only hate, and driving the hate, the bourgeois fear that that the privileges and power which form the core of their identity are threatened.
    The reason there is no coherent discussion of public policy on the Left is that they will seize any policy position that promises to continue their hold on power. Unable to formulate arguments using reason, they fall back to snark, which is another word for mockery. And mockery is an exercise of power, not reason.

  25. Secular Kurds will be massacred by the Islamist Erdoğan, courtesy of Trump.

    Will the right-wing Americans that called Obama a Muslim see the obscene irony in all this?

  26. Perhaps the problem is that we’re all too stupid to understand Emery’s Grand Vision. Perhaps it’s like understanding the Mind of God, which we cannot see in full but only glimpse, as if through a glass, darkly.

    His 8:54 suggests that America’s role in the world includes “Defender of Kurds from Muslims.” He is calling us to arms to deal with the Muslim menace, no less than Urban II, who preached the First Crusade in 1095.

    Okay, so America should exterminate all Muslims. Fine, but is that within the President’s authority under the War Powers Act? Shouldn’t that be a Declaration of War made by Congress? And how do we get around the fact that “Muslim” is a religion, not a nation-state . . . doesn’t that pose a problem under the framework established by the Treaty of Westphalia?

    That’s the problem with people who think they’re God. They never give clear answers, only cryptic comments. No wonder they end up in the loony bin.

  27. Will Emery now see the irony in the fact that the Democrats who supported Obama abandoning Iraq, and who attacked Bush for taking us into a war they fully supported at the beginning, are now complaining about Trump trying to extricate us from Iraq?

    That whole situation is a mess. I don’t like Trump abandoning the Kurds, but I don’t like us being there in the first place.

    So tell me Emery, what is the right path as far as the Kurds are concerned? Are we to stay in the Mideast forever to give them cover? You criticize Trump, yet you have no coherent response to the situation other than to attack him, nor does your side have any sort of plan other than using events there to discredit your opponents.

    Personally, I’d love to give the Kurds all the weapons they can use, some instructions on their use, and then get the hell out. Given the quality of the Turkish military, especially with the purging of their officer corps, I doubt the Turks would stand a chance against the Kurds if they were given a reasonable weaponry.

  28. You will never hear anything from Emery about a preferred US policy. He usually gets his talking points from Left wing sources, and they have no policy other than attack Trump all the time, for everything he does and does not do. If Trump had ordered Erdrogan to stay of out Syria and leave the Kurds alone, all of the Left wing web sites and ‘non-partisan’ outlets like Wapo and CNN would curse Trump for trying to get us into a war with Turkey over the Kurds. Doubtless this would be accompanied by features that show the kurds as everything the modern Left hates — capitalist, sexist, racist — with some corruption thrown in. The Turks would be shown to be much more progressive and peaceful than the Kurds, but now their patience has been pushed too far. And is Trump going to go to war with a NATO ally over some shitty people? It must be Putin’s doing.
    It’s all so predictable and tiresome.

  29. Apparently, Emery forgot how we got to Syria in the first place, courtesy of Barackus Obamanus and his witch queen, Hillary Clinton. We won’t even mention the mess they made in Libya.

  30. On the one hand we expect countries to have interests rather than friends, but we do expect them to understand their own interests. Unguided short-termism helps nobody.

    A sensible approach to this would have been for Trump and our allies to urge the Kurds to come to an agreement with Damascus that maintains the territorial integrity of Syria while the Kurds attain some autonomy. This would also assuage to some degree the Turks worries in that an independent Kurdish state would not emerge. Instead we have Trump caving in on a whim or perhaps to protect his many Turkish businesses and entanglements, and Erdoğan getting to be more of a megalomaniac.

    I doubt that this will end up having a good outcome for the Turks — it’s not hard to see the YPG switching to classic insurgency tactics against the invaders. The beneficiary’s are likely Russia and Iran and perhaps ISIS.

    Sad stuff

  31. A sensible approach to this would have been for Trump and our allies to urge the Kurds to come to an agreement with Damascus that maintains the territorial integrity of Syria while the Kurds attain some autonomy.

    And … just like that, Emery proves that he’s totally ignorant of reality. Have you not been watching how the Assads have treated their people?

    And if Erdogan thought that Kurds threatened Turkey with their autonomy now, how would things be different when they have the “autonomy” you propose, but under a vicious dictator like Assad?

    Erdogan is only slightly better than Assad in that respect. The Kurds have suffered under Turkey for decades, just as they’ve suffered under Assad. I think Trump has bungled things badly by announcing the withdrawal of American support for the Kurds as now that Turkey has attacked the Kurds are switching from a war on ISIS to a survival mode against Turkey. I applaud his desires to draw down the troops, but I don’t think his timing and methods were good. But at least he wasn’t doing it to meet some political talking point he set for himself like his predecessor.

  32. Still waiting for someone to explain the endpoint of Americans protecting Kurds in Syria . . .
    Seriously. I must have read a half dozens editorials by conservatives moaning about Trump abandoning the Syrian Kurds, not one identified a path to EVER leaving Syria.

  33. Re-post, because I can.

    Trump’s failure isn’t his decision to withdraw troops — that must happen at some point — it is his complete failure to broker a diplomatic solution that protects his Kurdish allies from Turkish repression, and Turkey from attacks by Kurdish separatists.

    The message to all US allies is that Trump couldn’t care less about your security interests — he’ll throw you under a bus as soon as it suits him. The conclusion is that US allies need to look elsewhere for their security. This not only makes for a more unstable and dangerous world, but also weakens US power.

  34. YES! That’s exactly correct, Emery, you finally understand the central point.

    The United States of America has no legal, ethical or moral obligation to spend American lives and treasure trying to force ancient enemies fighting over lands halfway around the world, to play nice with each other. So we’re not going to do it. They’re on their own.

    Of course, you draw the wrong conclusions from that, Emery, which is fully to be expected. But if you can comprehend the most important point – Not Our Circus, Not Our Monkeys – there’s hope for the warring parties to understand it, too.

  35. Presidential elections are generally binary choices, that said. I have voted 3rd party almost half the presidential elections that have occurred during my voting tenure. I vote 3rd party to express my displeasure at the choices presented by the two majoritarian parties.

    I viewed Trump as a Democrat, who was running as a Republican, but probably less leftist that most Democrats.

    I couldn’t vote for Hillary.

    Since I was pretty sure that Hillary would win Minnesota, so my vote for Trump would have been wasted.

    So I voted for Stein, thinking if the Green party could get to the magical major party status, it would cause future disarray to the Democrat machine.

    I don’t like Trump’s personality, anymore than I care for his taste in furniture. But he has surprised me by not being as far to the left as I had suspected.

    Given what I see right now, I will probably vote for him this next time around.

  36. JD: Turkey is doing what Turkey does: murdering any opposition. Trump gave them permission and a pat on the butt.

    Hard to see how you can rationalize it.

  37. ^^ Woolly and other isolationists argue “it’s not our war!” while conveniently forgetting world history. When ISIS regains strength or thousands of refugees flee, it becomes our problem, again.

    Woolly and the other isolationists on this thread need to make an argument as to why more war is better than preventing war. I’ll wait….

  38. Democrat foreign policy example: Trump’s failure isn’t his decision to withdraw troops — that must happen at some point — it is his complete failure to broker a diplomatic solution that protects his Kurdish allies from Turkish repression, and Turkey from attacks by Kurdish separatists.

    So, in this fantasy world, who enforces the diplomatic solution? We have two warring parties, in spite of being enemies for tens if not hundreds of years, who are somehow forced or coerced by Trump to sign peace document as given above. Dust off hands and bring the US troops home. And then, a week later it all starts up again. Then what?

    Oh, oh, I know! It’s Trump’s fault again.

    See that’s the secret. It’s always Trump’s fault. It just doesn’t matter.

  39. It’s always the guy sitting in his comfortable chair who wants to send other people’s children to die far from home.

  40. Main winners of Obama Syria policy:
    Russia, Assad

    Main winners of Trump Syria policy:
    Russia, Assad, ISIS

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