Here is part of what Donald Trump said in Iowa:
“I didn’t like it when Ronald Reagan suggested it because we didn’t have the technology. We do have the technology now, and we’re going to build a giant dome over our country to protect us from a hostile source. And I think it’s a great thing, and it’s going to all be made in the United States, and that’s something that I consider productive. You know, when I watch, uh, our guys operate those things, it’s unbelievable. Missile coming in, missile coming in. These geniuses sit down. Most of them are, you know, they’re from MIT. But they sit down, bing! bing! bing! bing! boom! ph-sheee! It’s gone, it’s amazing! I think we could use…do you like that? I mean, isn’t that better than giving other countries billions of dollars? Billions! We’re going to get billions of dollars out of the country and so they can build a dome, but we don’t have a dome ourselves! We’re going to have the greatest dome ever!”
Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay…
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day goes like this…
Is it responsible to vote for someone who talks like this the power of the American Presidency?
…because, to be brutally frank, I’d have hesitated to vote for a student candidate for president of the 8th grade in junior high who gave a speech like that. Wouldn’t you? It bothers me that Trump would say all that, it bothers me that he thinks it’s going to win votes by saying it, it bothers me that he obviously doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, and it bothers me that he has such a low opinion of the American public.
Ethics Alarms 
Still more coherent than the “Guam might tip over” guy, but yes that is a bit out there.
I’m not sure why this is a problem? A missile defense system that would intercept and destroy all incoming nukes was such a threat to upend MAD that it helped finally break the back of the USSR. And we are spending billions on Ukraine and Israel to help them against enemies that are lobbing thousands of missiles against them. I don’t necessarily agree with Trump’s isolationist rhetoric here, but I don’t disagree that we’re stripping ourselves of military resources to benefit other countries, and it is a problem if it leaves us vulnerable. An effective missile defense system might be cheaper than maintaining a huge array of ICBMs, too, not that I’ve looked into such costs.
As always, though, the inarticulate, off-the-cuff manner of speaking, devoid of all filters, is aggravating, and imprecise language always gets Trump in trouble. And the vote for him is a vote against the establishment that is destroying the country. I’d rather DeSantis, and he’ll get my vote, but if it is Trump against Biden, or Trump against Newsom, it is Trump who gets my vote every time. I don’t greatly care what blather Trump spews. I’ve seen what he’s done, and I’ve seen what Biden has done, and the choice is crystal clear.
So you are saying, in essence, that Trump was right: he could shoot someone at high noon in Times Sq. and you would still vote or him? Because he his statements before this election cycle are far, far worse than in 2015-2016.
If Trump shot someone at high noon, that would be a game changer. Not to sound like the president of an ivy-league university, I would have to qualify that based on context. If he defended himself reasonably against assault, he wouldn’t lose my vote. If he was an aggressor, or he used force well beyond what is reasonable, then he would lose my vote, and I’d have to find some third-party candidate or write someone in. If he drove drunk off a bridge and left a passenger in his car to drown, I’d likewise have to find someone else to vote for.
However, we could debate hypotheticals all day long. Would I ever vote for Biden? Maybe, if he had a conversion experience that dramatically altered his worldview and administration’s direction. But the problem with these hypotheticals is that when it comes down to casting a vote, what candidates have actually done plays a much higher role than what they might do. Trump campaigned on energy independence, enforcing against illegal immigration, nominating conservative judges, and making NATO allies step up their game. Unlike so many politicians before him, he actually worked at fulfilling those promises, and was successful in places where no one thought he would be successful. Biden campaign on unifying the country and saving democracy, and since then has demonized half the population of the nation and flagrantly ignored democratic principles. Trump fought harder than any losing presidential candidate I’ve seen to try to prevent a Biden win, but at the end of the day, when the Electoral College voted for Biden, he stepped aside. Biden has actively persecuted his political adversary, and his party is now to trying to keep Trump and hundreds of other Republicans off of ballots with no due process. My evaluation between Trump and Biden is based on what they have already done.
I don’t like Trump. I hate his narcissism, I hate his bloviating, I hate his sexual morals, and I hate that at every step he shoots himself in the foot. I don’t like Biden. I hate his lies (which are becoming more and more manifest every day), I hate his unrepentant denial of Catholic doctrine, but most of all I hate his policies that stand athwart everything that is good and decent and true. There are so many areas where both men are bad, and in some areas they are bad in almost the same way. The difference is that Biden has long since crossed lines that invalidate him. Trump, for all his ills, has not yet.
And the comments being sent to spam hell continues…
Given which ones get spammed and which ones post immediately, I’d believe there’s an algorithm deliberately trying to suppress a certain viewpoint in the commentary.
I caught it. It was great: Zing! Pzapp! Fwingy!
A little bit out there, sure. Would I take it over the guy who says half of America is the enemy? Yes, considering I am part of that other half he says is the enemy.
Yeah, that’s a bit out there. Ok, it’s quite a bit out there. But here’s what I think is tragic about the whole thing.
Even if President Trump were right, and even if he were nominated and re-elected a second time, this would never happen…at least not under re-President Trump’s watch.
Even if a country-sized dome was possible, every woke-driven, anti-Republican, anti-American, anti-Trump university from MIT to Stanford would do everything possible to denigrate it, deny it, and destroy it. It would be laughed at, derided, and ridiculed. The front page of every newspaper would chuckle about how “Trump’s Dome Concocts ‘Stupor’ Dome”. Every non-Fox news outlet would, in 100% lockstep, revert to the 25th Amendment and demand President Trump be institutionalized. Do I even need to mention Joy Behar? A Democrat-driven Senate – assuming it remained Democrat-controlled – would kill any legislation, any bill, even the germ of the idea of a dome. They would never…no, I mean NEVER…let President Trump have any kind of a victory.
And this is what I hate about our political climate. Even feasible ideas become garbage when the person putting forth the idea associates with the wrong team.
“Even if a country-sized dome was possible, every woke-driven, anti-Republican, anti-American, anti-Trump university from MIT to Stanford would do everything possible to denigrate it, deny it, and destroy it.”
They would each individually envision themselves as the Galen Erso type character from the only good Star Wars movie to come out of Disney – Rogue One. In which a scientist compelled to work for the evil empire designed a weakness in the system to be exploited by the rebellion.
They would see themselves as heroes undermining an evil emporer.
Only they wouldn’t do a thing because leftist cubicle denizens of the professional class will talk a good game but are ultimately sheep. But they’d think they were heroic talking all about it.
Did you know that Israel’s homeland missile defense system is called “Iron Dome?” That was my first thought when he mentioned a dome. A protective system covering the whole country much like a dome.
That’s what I figured he was referencing (not very well), too, especially since he mentioned other countries doing it.
Joel.
The big drawback to a dome is that someone with a big space vacuum cleaner from planet space all could come and suck out all the atmosphere.
I just could not resist. Only Barf can save us
Awesome!! How long has it been?!?…”You’ve captured their stunt doubles!!”
He’s been watching too many science fiction movies. Much like the people having hysterics over AI’s.
It sounds like Trump being Trump to me, talking about policy the with the same precision and candor that he’s always had (ie, none). His rhetoric regarding an intercontinental ballistic missal defense “dome” is virtually identical to his talk about a “big beautiful wall” along the Mexican border. His complaint about building a defense system for the European continent versus the North American continent is spoken with the same precision that he discussed imbalances in NATO funding as president. He simply has no ability to articulate policy without bizarre imagery, exaggeration, and sound effects.
I don’t believe it has ever been truly ethical to vote for Trump. At best, he has always been the least unethical solution to the ethics zugzwang that is contemporary American politics. The more he runs his mouth in post-2020 bitterness, the more apparent his demeanor has always been antithetical to the presidency. That he is a former president making “Pew-Pew” noises is more “ick” than any new substantive revelation.
Birds’ gonna fly, Trump’s gonna Trump.
That’s The Julie Principle indeed. But when you sound like an idiot, it raised the rebuttable presumption that you are an idiot. He’s talking about a trillion $ investment like it’s like buying a cool video game, and Biden has already pushed the debt into the stratosphere. He never did build the wall, but at least we knew that a huge, long wall was theoretically possible and affordable.
I was thinking along these same lines.
Trump thinks along the same lines that normal people think along. “Why can’t we build a wall to keep illegal immigrants out?” “Why can’t people applying for asylum wait in Mexico while we process their claim?” “Why do we fund an ‘iron dome’ over Israel but not the US?” “If we need oil, and we have oil in the US, why don’t we drill for oil here?”
Most of these things aren’t actually that simple logistically or politically. At the same time, many of Trump’s greatest successes came from doing the common sense thing anyone would have done to address a problem, which other politicians continue to refuse to do for either political (fear of mockery in the press; wheeling and dealing) or suspicious reasons (…who is benefitting from American dependence on foreign oil? Who is benefitting from being China’s lapdog?)
…but he expresses everything like a drunk frat boy trying to explain the idea to his friends, which has never helped his public image even when the idea has elements that make sense.
Isn’t the “dome” he’s referring to Regan’s Star Wars project? The one that broke the Soviets? He isn’t wrong that we could have the technology to do it, and if anyone is worried about Global Thermonuclear War (how about a nice game of chess?) it isn’t really THAT stupid. Certainly it is better than thinking that electric cars are good for the environment when they are, in fact, worse than their ICE counterparts.
I would like to continue with the comparison of Trump to Biden. Trump wants to spend a huge amount of money to protect the nation from nuclear missiles and is a proven blowhard. Biden wants to spend that money instead on solar and wind energy, electric cars, all electric appliances and has shown that he’ll defy the Supreme Court to do what he wants. Trump’s may not work and waste the money. Biden’s WILL not work and is ruining the environment he claims to be protecting while dragging this country down into ruin with a destabilized power grid and the inability to function on even a basic level as well as wasting that money.
In a vacuum, we should not vote for Trump and all the idiotic things he says. In a case with him running against someone reasonable, we should not vote for Trump. However, in a choice between him and Biden, well, I have to quote the rationalization. “There are worse things” than to vote for Trump.
Well, here’s the thing. Trump is wrong to say that we didn’t have the technology to do this when Reagan proposed it. And as far as all the anti-Republicans, et al who would oppose Trump’s Dome? That’s exactly what they did to Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (aka Star Wars).
I believe Reagan felt — and I think that he was absolutely correct — that there was something fundamentally immoral and unethical about Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). Not to mention that it is really rather un-American. The idea that we would hold our civilians hostage to deter the Soviet Union from launching a nuclear attack is just not right. It may have worked, but that doesn’t make it moral or ethical.
I think Reagan’s SDI was one of his best, boldest proposals. The idea that trying to protect your country’s people is somehow destabilizing or provocative is just ludicrous. And if it had actually been deployed it likely would have worked. It’s opponents would endlessly sneer that it couldn’t be 100% foolproof, but that was never the goal or the need. The deterrence would be to sow doubt in your enemy’s mind — if one doesn’t think a first strike will be decisive, then one is much less likely to launch it. It’s why MAD worked, and it’s why SDI would have worked.
As Sarah says, though, it did help bring down the Soviet Union.
And, to boot, compared to defending against a full-on Soviet nuclear attack, defending against attacks by countries such as Iran or North Korea or even Pakistan should be much easier.
Trump is inarticulate, he often has his facts wrong or cannot muster them properly, his rhetoric can be atrocious. But the presidential election is getting to be closer to a zero sum game. If it is a binary choice between Trump and Biden I will hold my nose and vote for Trump.
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Pardon the rant, but I’ve long felt SDI was one of our greatest missed opportunities of the last half century.
Yes, its stupid but we already knew that. I would say ispa res loqitur, but I think the Julie (Julian? I can’t quite remember) principle applies. I already know I would vote for pretty much any other conservative but him, but if it comes down to him and Biden…idk maybe I’ll vote for myself as a protest vote.
Come to think of it, what do you guys say? Vote for me! I’ll make Jack secretary of education we can have some ethics back in our schools.
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