I could dice this standard issue Trump Derangement, Axis of Unethical Conduct parroting, Big Lie-stuffed, steaming pile of partisan offal into smithereens in a response to him, but all that would accomplish is to hurt his feelings, lose me a freind, and get me flamed by strangers in his bubble. Would there be a point in doing that? I don’t see it. So my friend remains one more victim of the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck. There are millions of them. Here is the post. I’ll comment briefly at the end….
“Trump is, by far, the worst president in U.S. history. He’s unstable, erratic, and self-aggrandizing. He lies constantly. And he’s not a leader. A leader LEADS; he gets people to follow him, within his country and abroad. A leader understands the art of compromising when needed, to keep everything moving forward. Trump knows how to belittle others. He knows how to behave like an extortionist (like threatening our NATO allies that he will leave NATO unless they do as he says). But that is not leadership.“The chaos at the airports and the chaos in the middle east are all reflections of Trump’s poor leadership skills. He’s good at throwing tantrums. But he’s not good at working with others–whether it’s the Democrats he will need to resolve the TSA mess or the allies he will need if he wants to get the Strait of Hormuz open and keep it open so that oil can freely flow.“What are Trump’s priorities? He’s big on putting his name and face everywhere. His signature is now going to be added to the dollar bill; no US President ever had his signature on our currency. His face will appear on a commemorative coin that our government will produce in July, in conjunction with the 250th birthday of America. Why? That’s the sort of thing a dictator does–put his name and face on money–it’s not the American way.“Trump went into this war with Iran half-cocked, without making any attempt to first get support from the US public, Congress, or our allies. And Iran–by stopping the flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz–is damaging the economies of countries all around the world. Trump does not know how to solve this. He is frustrated. He lies and says Iran is dying to make a deal with us. But they have us over a barrel right now. Oil prices will not be coming down any time soon; they will continue to rise. In the mean time, we’re lifting sanctions we’d wisely placed on Russia and Iran–giving money to our adversaries.“If China were to attack Taiwan right now, there’s little we could do to stop them. And Taiwan produces 90% of the microchips we need to keep our economy–and our military–functioning. Meanwhile, we must borrow money to fund this war in Iran. Our national debt keeps growing. (And don’t forget–in just eight years, we reach the point where we won’t be able to fully fund social security anymore. Is anyone in Washington proposing doing anything to address that impending crisis?)“Trump says he doesn’t need anybody else; he doesn’t need our longtime allies. But we’re heading towards an international recession, due to this war he chose to start. And he doesn’t seem to see what’s coming.”
Well.
1. We judge Presidents by their own objectives, results and policies. There is literally no factual basis to call Donald Trump the “worst President” of even an unsuccessful one unless “worst” is defined as “the President whose policies I disagree with the most.” That is like a Thirties conservative saying that FDR was the worst President ever, or a Southern Democrat in the 1860s saying that Lincoln was the “Worst President Ever.” Trump has had one of the most consequential, transformative first year of a term in Presidential history, and the most consequential first year of a second term of any President. Anyone calling Trump the worst President after living through the Biden disaster automatically destroys his or her credibility. If the writer wasn’t a friend, I would have stopped reading after the first sentence.
2. “Unstable…lies constantly.” Two well-established Big Lies and Trump Derangement narrative stand-bys. I’m sick of writing about them.
3. “The sort of thing a dictator does.” Except Trump is obviously not a dictator. He is using Presidential powers that exits to be used. All the self-promotion is obnoxious and hands his foes sticks to beat him with, but it has no substantive impact at all. What difference does it make whose signature is on the dollar?
4. The nonsense about seeking support from the public, Congress and allies before attacking Iran: utter ignorance. Roosevelt was waging war against Germany secretly because the public was still frozen into isolationism. Lincoln didn’t have public support for the Civil War. Presidents have typically manufactured justifications for wars they have decided were in the nation’s interest: the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I. The attack on Iran, like the removing of Maduro from Venezuela, required secrecy, and the only ally the U.S. could trust this time was Israel. The President had the power to take action against Iran, and half of Congress is determined to foil any policy, domestic or foreign, that Trump proposes. My freind is apparently a fan of Obama’s pusillanimous “leading from behind” style.
5. China “could invade Taiwan” and then all sorts of horrible things might happen. “Future news = Fake news” If China was going to risk invading Taiwan, doing so while Biden was non-President was the perfect opportunity to do it. There is “little we could do to stop them”? I’ll take that bet.
6. The United States has to borrow money to do anything. Both parties have abdicated responsibility for the debt, and both parties—and the public—are estopped from blaming anyone but themselves and their elected officials for the looming debt disaster.
7. Trump is at fault for the Democrats withholding funding for the TSA to virtue-signal to their radical base that they oppose deporting the millions of illegals their party allowed across our borders, even though ICE is funded through 2029? How does that work? That’s another place where I would have stopped reading if someone else had posted this.
I could fisk the rest, but it’s a waste of my time. When someone gets to the point that they are relying on biased and dishonest sources and lack the skills, curiosity, integrity and perspective to independently challenge what his or her friends are saying, listening and considering are not options.
It’s tragic.
Ethics Alarms 
There should be a name for situations like this where someone who is intelligent and kind also lacks critical thinking skills in a specific area of life. I think of it like textbook or kindergarten morality, where a person either doesn’t have the temperament or hasn’t studied deeply enough to have actual substantive opinions but sounds superficially plausible. Reducing war gaming to a kind of “office politics morality” is part of why we are where are as a nation. There are no really good decisions in war.
Your friend tracks with what I’ve experienced working in a college/office environment. It’s exactly the type of person who makes a great friend, who would visit you while you were dying in the hospital, but has no business being in leadership over anything complicated because of an overly saccharine view of morals. They are unable to look past unlikable characteristics of Trump or engage in real, fact based, hard reality.
This type of mentality is why college students weren’t suspended when they surrounded the sociology professor complaining about Halloween costumes and why college campuses have now become so erratic. No one wants to expel or suspend anyone anymore.
I think it goes beyond TDS to something deeper. It’s the Neville Chamberlin type of person, probably a great guy in his private life but is less interested in facts and rigorous philosophy than in peace and consensus.
Your friend tracks with what I’ve experienced working in a college/office environment. It’s exactly the type of person who makes a great friend, who would visit you while you were dying in the hospital, but has no business being in leadership over anything complicated because of an overly saccharine view of morals. They are unable to look past unlikable characteristics of Trump or engage in real, fact based, hard reality.
I think I can say with at least some authority (of having a point) that “Trump’s base” (those who were beside him most in the early days) and who are not of that university or college cohort that you refer to, have a few critical things to say about what they see happening, and what they believe it means.
Thus it becomes an interesting question: How would you frame or reframe the issues to one such as Fuentes? It has importance only because his group is significant within the polity. His influence is not minor.
What is your appeal and argument?
https://rumble.com/v77qg96-maga-accounts-are-coping-on-x.html
I’m not sure if I understand your question, but I think you are asking me what should be done about the far right. I don’t know much about about Fuentes except briefly what I’ve heard about him, so I am going solely based on that.
I am not really concerned with the far right though because they have basically lost. They don’t really have any influence over anything. They just make a lot of videos and occasionally do a protest. The KKK doesn’t have any influence over anything, nor do Neo-Nazis.
Perhaps that is me putting my head in the sand. I don’t see any major institution anywhere in American society where the far right has any real power, but I see many where the far left does.
I’m not sure if I understand your question, but I think you are asking me what should be done about the far right. I don’t know much about about Fuentes except briefly what I’ve heard about him, so I am going solely based on that.
I do not see Fuentes in any sense as “far right” and in fact he has more in common with a sensible conservatism-populism of early 20th century. His “America First” ideas are those of former America and former Americans. He seems radical because of that darned Overton Window …
I am actually asking what you would say to “correct” him, to set him straight, to put him on the “right” path, and for that reason I submitted a video with his “oratory”, such as it is.
You are wrong if you think he has not influence. I have read that there are many younger people (staffers, researchers, assistants) in the present administration who watch him.
(I find his views quite coherent in some areas but “irresponsible” and juvenile in numerous others. But he is certainly a talented communicator).
Fuentes may or may not be “far right.” I will just go based on the general argument he makes in the video.
I saw a poll about MAGA and Trump. The Iran war really hasn’t moved the polling much (if it’s accurate). I was under the impression that there was a potential war within MAGA, but so far, that seems to be more in the online space than in actual numbers.
Even so, it seems odd to vote Democrat to punish Republicans when Democrats will give you LESS of what you want rather than equal or better than the Republicans. We also don’t know the long game in Iran just yet. Trump doesn’t seem to want to invade, but I really don’t know.
Would a full war with Iran fracture MAGA? Maybe. Hard to say. The Iraq war still needs a good analysis. In the long-run, maybe it was right? Foreign policy can have intended and unintended ripple effects. I personally don’t want any new wars, so I am hoping this conflict ends soon.
“If China was going to risk invading Taiwan, doing so while Biden was non-President was the perfect opportunity to do it. There is “little we could do to stop them”? I’ll take that bet.”
There’s always a better opponent to them. The truth is that they would find fault with any military action Trump takes. He could take on Putin right now- everyone’s favorite villain- and they would act the same way they act now.
A leader LEADS; he gets people to follow him, within his country and abroad. A leader understands the art of compromising when needed, to keep everything moving forward. Trump knows how to belittle others. He knows how to behave like an extortionist (like threatening our NATO allies that he will leave NATO unless they do as he says). But that is not leadership.
Written by a person who does not understand leadership. Trump has been leading from the front, rather than the rear. He has show a willingness to take the political hit for making a decision that is unpopular with parts of his base and with independents, because he understands the stakes and is willing to pay the price.
“Soft” leadership is negotiating with all and sundry to build some kind of consensus, but our putative allies have shown no appetite at all for making difficult decisions that might have a political cost. Opposing Trump is cost-free for them — that is, until Trump shames them into seeing the world as it is rather than the fake world of their cloistered echo-chambers safe behind virtue-signalling force-fields.
Trump is leading the only way possible in the current environment — “hard” leadership with force and relentless decisiveness. It is impossible to “work” with today’s Democratic party and international leftist elites, because their base will rebel against them if they aid him in the least and do not oppose every single thing he says or does.
I think Trump is an incomplete and tragically thin-skinned person, and a sane country would’ve had a better choice than him available. The fact that we did not says more about the Democrats than Trump, and while he has vast personal shortcomings, leadership is not among them.
I wonder how the friend would evaluate George S Patton’s or McArthur’s leadership capabilities.
The reason why those born in 1920 to 1940 were considered the greatest generation is because every man woman and child experienced real sacrifice in their lives. Many of today’s Americans bitch loudly if they can’t get their daily latte let alone live on the limited rationed goods they had to survive on.
I hear Democrats complain about gas prices, as if the Democratic party doesn’t oppose using gasoline or drilling for gasoline at every opportunity.
I feel tempted to say, “So we should not attempt to liberate an entire nation from an extremist theocracy that uses the revenue from our oil purchases to fund terrorism across an entire region because we might pay more at the gas pumps?”
The willed blindness that is most common across this blog is amazing to me. I prefer to keep my distance from this issue, and all issues, and remain an independent thinker. Every criticism made in what you-plural label a “screed” (this word is used to imply that there is no base to what is being said and is similar to “racist” and “Nazi” in usage) has elements of truth. But it is not the full truth. So, it needs a correction, a rewriting, to be more fair and accurate.
4. The nonsense about seeking support from the public, Congress and allies before attacking Iran: utter ignorance. Roosevelt was waging war against Germany secretly because the public was still frozen into isolationism. Lincoln didn’t have public support for the Civil War. Presidents have typically manufactured justifications for wars they have decided were in the nation’s interest: the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I. The attack on Iran, like the removing of Maduro from Venezuela, required secrecy, and the only ally the U.S. could trust this time was Israel. The President had the power to take action against Iran, and half of Congress is determined to foil any policy, domestic or foreign, that Trump proposes. My freind is apparently a fan of Obama’s pusillanimous “leading from behind” style.
This seems to me a conventional view of American history that itself can be interrogated and analyzed. Trump promised time and again to focus on the country not on foreign entanglements. And to say that some special, unexpected contingency arose that he was forced to respond to is flatly false. It may very well be that this geo-political manoeuvre may result in positive gains for the nation, and thus for those ewhi make up his base of support, but it also is possible that it was and is an startling political blunder that endangers everything he attempted. Why cannot you-plural investigate or at least consider this?
Presidents have typically manufactured justifications for wars they have decided were in the nation’s interest: the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I.
So, if this is true then entire population must sit quietly by and simply accept what leadership does — in collusion with a corrupt business class and the “military industrial complex”. How about the class of Epstein billionaires with astounding extra-democratic influence? Jack, this argument seems really really bad. It simply cannot stand up to reasonable consideration. And in fact IT WON’T and it isn’t. I agree: there is tons of sometimes irresponsible opinion floating around about this event (Iran) and much else, but the assent of people for policies favorable to them is part of democracy.
Very informed and quite intelligent and experienced people say that this war is more likely than not to mirror the other wars that have done tangible harm to people and the republic. Fact. Because I read and listen to all sides I am aware of the other side of the question and the possibility of “success”. It is up in the air.
The “removal” as you put it of a foreign leader has completely changed the possibility of maintaining a rhetorical posture the US has relied on throughout the post-war. Now the falsity of the entire narrative has been reduced to laughable appearance. At the very least this truthful reveal of the real interests of the American business and military class must be acknowledged. What that actually means is that America’s people are irrelevant to neo-imperial purposes! (And I am glad that Maduro is not there. But “they” should have worked it out for local powers to have assassinated him. The whole nighttime invasion thing is incredibly bad PR if the world is considered).
You mentioned John Mearsheimer (and Jeffrey Sachs) in one of your previous comments and I watched a couple of Mearsheimer’s recent interviews concerning the war in Iran. Your statement, “It is up in the air” certainly is quite valid. If the primary objective was regime change, then success is far from certain at this point and perhaps out of reach.
Thank you for your comment. I am myself really confused about what authority to give my ear to. I watch many YouTube and Rumble videos of “talking heads”. The discord between one group who says we are winning and the other who says it is a quagmire (developing) is notable.
Some say this was Trump’s presidency ending blunder: the Democrats, when they soon take over House and Senate, will impeach him and send him (somehow) to jail.
Isn’t it curious that the future is already there, but we cannot see it?
Thank you for all your comments. I enjoy reading your contributions to EA. I must admit, before you left and returned, I had a difficult time sorting out some of your comments. However, since you returned it seems I have a better understanding of your commentary. I don’t think your writing style has changed but perhaps my point of view.
I’m not one of the prolific commenters here; I seldom write more than one or two paragraphs even if I disagree with a position taken on this blog. I’m glad you have the energy and motivation to bring a different point of view.
I found your rebuttal to a current post quite invigorating. It didn’t appear to me that you’ve come across as someone who has “been ordained to educate the EA audience“.
Thank you, Edward. Very kind of you!
Here’s the key: I ordained myself!
When someone gets to the point that they are relying on biased and dishonest sources and lack the skills, curiosity, integrity and perspective to independently challenge what his or her friends are saying, listening and considering are not options.
There are a number of things going on at the same time: Yes, there really is a large class of those labeled “deranged by deeply psychological reaction” to the man Trump. But there is also a contingent of analysts who are not “deranged” and who yet are critical of aspects of what he does or is doing.
I have also very clearly pointed out that in our present that power-concentration pursue objects simply on the basis of power and power’s dynamic. It has nothing to do with what is just or ethical, it has to do with use of power. In such an environment that class of people who mindlessly oppose Trump (and a certain political direction he has outlined) act similarly. Their lawlessness their irrationality their exertion of power … is a mirroring of what goes on around them. They are reduced (as you clearly indicate and support) to stay to the side docility. But they refuse.
The country — the binding agreements — start to come apart at the seams (as the saying hoes …) The disagreement take on a independent life — like the Frankenstein monster.