I’ve been frank about my long-term ambivalence (at best) about Donald Trump.
In fact, if the universe were a purely binary construct, I could say with a straight face that the only think I like less than Trump…
…is “#NeverTrump”, the reaction to Trump among Republicans that became ever-more knee-jerk over time, to the point of having “Republicans” endorsing Biden over Trump last year.
One of the worst – and by “worst”, I mean “Most Perennially Dim” – offenders is Tom Nichols.
And on a weekend where the Administration lived down to something far below our worst expectations, Tom Nichols exceeded even them:
Naturally, there are Democrats who, given their dubious critical-thinking skills, accept this notion – that Kristi Noem abrogated her foreign policy and national defense duties attendant to being governor of South Dakota, and being seen in public on a day when the person Tom Nichols endorsed was not.
He later TRIED to save himself somewhat by saying he meant just that she was outside in a crowd during this (totally BS) surge of China virus.
First rule of holes…
I actually believe nevertrumpers are driving folks towards support for Trump.
This is a great example showing that TDS is a mental disorder. It imapirs the cognitive functions. In this case it has led Nichols, by all accounts an intelligent person, to believe that the governor of South Dakota has some responsibility to not look heroic (she does) and celebrate a public event when Biden has screwed the pooch in Afghanistan.
Believe me, to Nichols this makes perfect sense, and he can’t see why you don’t see the connection.
Maybe he has a point.
Minneapolis has a foreign policy, Saint Paul has one too and while they both argue the finer points of the Macedonian border dispute their respective cities burned.
She’s got a lot more faith in that flag than I do.
Guessing Nichols would approve of the black flag I fly from where the stars and stripes used to be.
I was so discussed by Biden, that about 3 months ago, I took down my US flag and replaced it with two other flags. The 82nd Airborne Division flag, the unit that I served with stateside, and the 173rd Airborne Brigade flag, the unit I served with in Vietnam.
Tom didn’t even get the geography right. Apparently the parade was in Deadwood.
Nothing wrong with being proud of your country, as long as you accept it for what it is and don’t have exagerate its magnificence.
The ScienceTM crowd worries about a governor whom has been vaccinated against the Deadliest Virus the World Has Ever Known (with a 99% survivability rate– move over Bubonic Plague!) riding a horse at a parade outside on a sunny day, bathed in UV light. I predict this will be labeled a super-spreader event, just as dubiously as Sturgis last year and this year. Not to sound too cynical, but Mr. Nichols wouldn’t be trying to knock his pet foreign-policy-genius president’s latest clusterf**k off the front page, would he?
Arch #nevertrumper Bill Kristol, last Friday, when US diplomats in Kabul began burning documents:
https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1426243789467885569?s=20
I suppose Gov. Noem could have hunkered down at Camp David with Joe Biden, but she wasn’t invited.
I love my country because it is mine. Nuff said.
If you don’t love yours, why not move to someplace better?
There’s little about Trump support that willful ignorance can’t explain. After all, Trump is unusual in that most of what he says and does is a matter of public record. The only substantial differences between Trump supporters and Trump critics is in how they interpret the same information.
To RINOs, there is no such thing as an imperfect vessel.
Trump might have been the most conservative president since Andrew Jackson, but he wasn’t perfect – mean tweets – so he’s bad and everything he stands for is bad and must be strenuously opposed, subverted, delayed, blocked.
To Liberals, there is no such thing as an imperfect vessel.
Franken, Obama, Cuomo, Ilhan, Biden, all flawed but all carrying the water in the right direction so all acceptable vessels. They must be protected and promoted as long as they’re useful.
Nothing to do with wilfull ignorance.
As far as I’m concerned, Nichols, Kristol, the Lincoln Project, etc are all just fish in a barrel. For me the problem is the Trump Skeptics or Ambivalents and their whole Trump is icky perspective (because it never gets anymore specific than that). Here’s the next item in a growing series of “what have we done”
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1428186079119790082.html
Love him or hate him, Donald Trump was critical to global security. Now that he’s gone, the world isn’t just much more dangerous, the entire global order is set to be rearranged. Here’s my view as an active duty officer (opinions mine).
Yes, Emery Idiot, your opinion means nothing. You are just a bloviating f – tard. At least he was willing to take (and pass without difficulty) a cognitive test. You know, the one that Joey Demento refuses to take? But, hey, keep supporting the most disastrous DemoCommie regime since Jimmy Carter. Dumb ass!
Surely by now it must be obvious to everyone that Joe Biden is not running the country. He can’t be, he plainly lacks the mental ability to handle the job.
Not blaming him – he’s 78 years old and everyone’s abilities fade someday – but setting aside partisanship for a moment, let’s just speak the simple truth:
Joe Biden is no longer competant to make the decisions. Someone else must be making them in his name.
Who is it?
Regarding support for Trump being “willfull ignorance”, I would have hoped that even Emery would figure out that a large part of the electorate wouldn’t be on board for a President whose secrets had gone to the Chinese and Russians via an illegal server and/or corrupt business deals, and who would serve at the beck and call of Planned Parenthood, the United Nations, and the like.
There is a place for legitimate differences in politics, but those differences ought to acknowledge the “whys” in such a way that those on the other side would say “yes, that’s at least part of how I feel”. Or, on the off chance that Emery would deign to educate himself, he’s using the “straw man” fallacy.
One of the best articles I have read in a very, very long time.
Why the Mongols, the Comanche and the Taliban will win every time: Assabiya
See Assabiya Wins Every Time
Bike, the point is the troll isn’t here to engage with facts. I’m not really sure why it comes around, guess this is its idea of fun, huh?
See my comment in the newest post; just ignore it. It never responds to factual challenge anyway. It must think it is doing some good of some kind, which is itself laughable.
JD:
I love my country because it is mine. Nuff said.
If you don’t love yours, why not move to someplace better?
This is one of the fundamental differences in brain-wiring between the left and the right. If we see something we don’t like, we avoid it. If we live somewhere we don’t like, we move to somewhere we do like. If THEY see something they don’t like, or live somewhere they don’t like, they fight to change that thing or location to their liking. It’s why so many deep red states have been moving purple (VA) or even blue (CO and NM) in the last few decades. The left destroys places and when those places get so bad that even the left leave, they bring their voting habits with them and destroy those new locales.
The great CS Lewis quote is entirely applicable here:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Squirrel** in the Capitol today, film at 11.
**Stinks to high heaven; this is a false flag or another FBI plant.
Greg on August 19, 2021 at 1:42 pm said:
. . .
See Assabiya Wins Every Time
The problem is Assabiya does not win every time.
Egyptian civilization held out for 4,000 years, even defeating whatever caused the bronze age collapse. The civilization of the Ptolomies was not as old as Egyptian civilization, but they were not barbarians. Inded they coined the word ‘barbarian” to refer to other people. The Romans who took Egypt from the Ptolomies were not barbarians. That happened during the height of the Roman republic, and some said it had already begun its decline. The people that destroyed the Roman Empire and ruled in their place were at least half-Romanized themselves and were not “one people.”
People have been claiming to have identified the “engine of history” for centuries. Marx & Engels, Jared Diamomnd, etc. They have all been proven wrong. There is no “engine of history.”
Ibn Khaldun’s perspective was too narrow or too short.
That tablet article looks interesting, Greg.
I’m going to read the article, MP 😉
I tend to agree about the engine of history thing, but I still think he has a point.
I would say that China is oozing with Assabiya right now.
I would also say that IBM in the 1990’s lost it’s Assabiya,
Maybe it is just another word for mojo, but it is the old story of hungry, ambitious, creative energy overcoming the bureaucratic and lethargic.
I mentioned the Mongols, Comanche and Taliban. All were brutal conquerors who came out of a harsh environment and went on to take over their worlds. There seems to be a common thread woven through those people. Granted there were many tribes who had a great deal of cohesion and motivation that occupy the dustbin of history – but maybe it was just the bad luck of having more motivated neighbors.
“There’s little about Trump support that…..”
What in the fuck does that mean? It’s just opening the digital mouth and letting drool run out. Speaking as Bill Peterson’s most beloved characteristic, I predict Bill would slap the shit out of Emery with some inane bullshit if he had not been pants’d on SITD.
Such stupidity was not thought possible just a few years ago. I bet Emery’s wife and kids will be real proud of his legacy.
Greg, I thought that Smith made some good points aside from his assabiya claims.
The tl;dr version is that every civilization needs renewal or it decays, and that our current civilization (America) is in desperate need of renewal, and every last one of our cultural institutions is working hard to prevent it.
Total agreement, MP.
Pedo Joe was savaged by….NPR….this afternoon. He studdered and stammered his way through a bit of incomprehensible twaddle, then toddled off, and called “a lid” on answering any more questions from his hand picked, leftist propaganda outlets.
Go to 20:40 to skip to the meat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YosbtO2IOsQ
This man is through. He will be removed next year, if not sooner.
And now we we have non-taliban terrorists active in Kabul (Isis, al qaida).
What this means is that any agreement we have with the taliban to allow people in Kabul, Americans and non-Americans, to freely travel to the airport is meaningless.
So Joe Smith, an American whom the taliban suspect is US intelligence, heads off to the airport. He never gets there. US complains to the taliban. Taliban shrugs “we know nothing!”