A shorter @Instapundit: “Eff you“:
The Tea Party movement — which you also failed to understand, and thus mostly despised — was a bourgeois, well-mannered effort (remember how Tea Party protests left the Mall cleaner than before they arrived?) to fix America. It was treated with contempt, smeared as racist, and blocked by a bipartisan coalition of business-as-usual elites. So now you have Trump, who’s not so well-mannered, and his followers, who are not so well-mannered, and you don’t like it.
They brought this on themselves.
[Saturday update]
The political elites have something very close to an infinite capacity for self delusion. Speaking of political obliviousness, happy sestercentennial to the Declaratory Act of March 18th, 1766.
Imagine if Trump (with all his faults) is the cure for elitism?
Where have we heard Mr. Trump’s platform before. Could it be that “giant sucking sound”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkgx1C_S6ls
I am a research engineer, engineering is based on physics, and the foundation of physics is the “invariants” and “conservation laws.”
Think about it. Ross Perot founded and ran on the Reform Party platform, and Donald Trump later on ran for the Reform Party nomination and for a time served as its “power broker” arbitrating between others seeking that nomination.
What is the “invariant”, what is the “conservation law” behind what the Reform Party is for. It is none other than trade protectionism and immigration restrictionism. Tell me how anything Mr. Trump is saying deviates or departs from any of the notorious statements by Mr. Perot in that video?
Yes, there are major differences in the bearer of that message. Mr. Perot famously would discriminate against divorced men in hiring whereas Mr. Trump appears to embrace divorce and remarriage. Ross Perot is the Uber Wonk, offering flip charts and complicated explanations that “whoosh” went over our heads whereas The Donald reduces every issue to grade-school taunts.
But is there really any difference between the two? OK, there was a sense that Mr. Perot wanted to grasp the “3rd rail of politics” Social Security two-handed whereas Mr. Trump is saying “keep your hands off our Social Security.”
It comes down to whether you believe in David Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage and Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand or you don’t. But that doesn’t take into account the Welfare State and the Multicultural Police. These days I am becoming an agnostic on these questions.
The difference between Perot and Trump is strictly a matter of style and not substance. Think of them as two very different professors you had in college, but they are both teaching to the same syllabus from the same textbook.
I don’t imagine Trump will cure elitism.
Don’t think Trump will cure much. I think he will build a wall.
It’s not very hard to do and I think he could manage it. It’s possible Trump could build the wall without being the President.
When you consider that some want to go to Mars- building a wall seems fairly easy in comparison and it seems more Americans would want a wall than the number of Americans which want to go to Mars.
I think Trump could be a cure for big government. If you equate big government with elitism [which seems close enough for horseshoes] then I could imagine that.
I don’t think President Cruz will build a wall, but also I don’t President Cruz could stop citizen Trump from building his wall, either.
I don’t think president Clinton would be the end of the world, and likewise I don’t think President Trump would be the end of the world.
President Clinton is so incompetent that she could also manage the end of big government. I don’t imagine Clinton could save Obamacare- I don’t think anyone could, even if they were competence.
Now Obama has not inspired black people and Clinton is certainly not going to inspire women. Massive embarrassment for women seems more likely.
I don’t think America is doomed. Europe on the other hand is another matter.
Trump did say he likes ignorant people .
–Trump did say he likes ignorant people .–
I think Trump said he likes the people who are not highly educated.
People who have done high school and perhaps have gone to a community college [or not]. Such as people typically in the service industry or construction industry.
Or as been said, Trump is populist candidate who gets blue collar support.
Of course people do this kind of work, can be highly educated and one has the stereotype of the waitress who want to be a movie star, etc.
Of course if you are an elitist, one doesn’t really have to get a higher education to be acceptable. Or being a scholar may not be as important as going to right ivy school and who one is rubbing elbows with. Or one can quite acceptable to elitist and be quite ignorant and/or a thug.
Anyways Trump likes the Salt of the Earth types- and that’s fairly typical sentiment throughout human existence. Or it’s only the elitists who manage to be disparaging to someone like secret service guy who willing to take a bullet to protect you- that is quite odd or simply strange/ignorant/silly/foolish..
The secret service agent who is willing to take a bullet to protect the President must “qualify for the GL-07 level or the GL-09 level” according to the Secret Service website. You can look up exactly what that means, but very roughly, it means, minimally, a bachelor’s degree with excellent grades and at least a year of grad school, again with excellent grades, and some additional indicators of good academic performance. And that’s the minimal requirements, and it is prior to the secret service training a successful applicant would receive.
Yes, smart, very competent, and elite people- unlike, Obama.
Excellent grades or just a 3.0 GPA? All of the grades reqs I have seen merely ask you to demonstrate you were able to drink at night and still do enough homework not to flunk out.
The grad school requirement is probably for the higher pay grade in leui of job experience that is typically required.
The main requirement is probably military or LE experience.
Applicants mush have Superior Academic Achievement which is based on (1) class standing, (2) grade-point average, or (3) honor society membership.
1. Class standing — Applicants must be in the upper third of the graduating class in the college, university, or major subdivision, such as the College of Liberal Arts or the School of Business Administration, based on completed courses.
2. Grade-point average (G.P.A.) — Applicants must have a grade-point average of:
3.0 or higher out of a possible 4.0 (“B” or better) as recorded on their official transcript, or as computed based on 4 years of education, or as computed based on courses completed during the final 2 years of the curriculum; or
3.5 or higher out of a possible 4.0 (“B+” or better) based on the average of the required courses completed in the major field or the required courses in the major field completed during the final 2 years of the curriculum.
3. Election to membership in a national scholastic honor society
Heh. I typed “mush” instead of “must”, but don’t worry, the rest was a straight cut and paste.
There are a lot of people without college degrees and not many of them think of themselves a stupid incompetents when compared to college grads. They know the derogatory views the elites have of them and they have their own views of people who think they are better than everyone else.
I think the disconnect or DC bubble problem is in part caused by the adoption of political correctness (even in Republican circles) and social status signalling. All the politicians are advised by people in suits, who get information from other people in suits. Sometimes they study people who don’t wear suits, but they don’t really converse with them. When they conduct some “meet-and-greet” with regular folks, the regular folks watch their language and try to be all proper because they’re talking to important people in suits.
Imagine the Downton Abbey folks asking if the staff has any problems. There could be all sorts of burning personal, economic, and social issues but the servants would never air those issues upstairs. Similarly, the suits in DC, including all the journalists, might pick up on some issues where the voters send them angry e-mails, but that doesn’t give them a clue as to how rank-and-file voters might feel when they talk among themselves.
People learn to self-censor, and put on polite airs when speaking to people in suits, especially to important people with high social status who are asking questions. So everyone at a Jeb! rally, or a Rubio rally, or a Kasich rally is conservative and upstanding and polite. They act like good church going folks and businessmen who are willing to express some anger at the usual things, such as taxes and our misguided foreign policy, but they’re not going to upset the hosts. So the hosts don’t find out what the people in the crowd really feel. The Tea Party tried to tell them, but few wanted to listen, and the Tea Party dampened back down under a barrage of insults.
When it becomes socially improper to speak the truth or express views that are deemed vulgar, people stop speaking it, and the truth goes unheard. And often the truth is ugly and heartfelt.
So along comes Trump, and by gosh he’ll say anything. He’s derisive and vulgar, and that means we can finally speak freely, too.
“F*** the Muslims! F*** the illegals! F*** China. Build a f***ing wall! Yeah. A big wall. Make Mexico pay for it.
And then ….”
Perhaps it’s not that the establishment wouldn’t listen, it’s that they gave us excuses and condescension until too many of us stopped saying what we really felt. Trump comes along and it’s like the speaking lamp is lit. Say anything. Say it loud and brash and in the faces of the politicians.
This of course scares the hell out of the people on the cocktail circuit who for months ran constant Trump coverage because it was like covering Jerry Springer. But now all the downstairs servants are out of control and there’s talk of evicting the master and his family, raiding his whiskey cabinet, and riding his horses through the library. Everybody is fed up and tired of holding their tongues. They’re tired of being told the proper way to vote. They’re tired of being told what opinions are acceptable, and who they should be outraged at (always some other group of politicians), as their real views are denounced as racist and bigoted or redneck or homophobic by every media outlet.
And along comes an opportunity not to correct the culture, but to incorrect it, and after holding our tongues for so long that’s got an undeniable appeal.
Americans are rough around the edges. That’s true across the political spectrum.
The DC bubble exists for two reasons. It’s profitable for them and they’ve learned the voters do not matter. The difference between parties is only on the margins.
Trump has all the right enemies. This is why it doesn’t matter what he says. Congress has avoided their jobs for decades. If they didn’t rubber stamp advice and consent they could hold hearings w/o fear.
Trump talks like a tyrant but congress just needs to do their job to avoid that danger. They could have with Obama as well but they’re gutless. Trump’s flexibility gives them the chance to grow a spine. The people would support them.
Trump remembers when America was a much different country. We need to turn back the clock in many of the ways Trump endorses. It doesn’t even matter if Trump is no conservative. Even Fred Thompson disappointed on that score. If only Fred had Trump’s energy.
People are fed up with crappy gas cans, being forced to buy expensive light bulbs that work no better than a trusty incandescent, etc. Do you think Jeb!, Kasich, Christie, or any of the others would do a single thing about that? Cruz maybe but I worry because he never answers a question. Too much of a politician. Ron Paul isn’t a choice so who am I stuck with?
If it is between Trump and H I certainly will vote for Trump.No qualms either. I voted for Ross Perot, Harry Brown, and Libertarian pretty much always. I would vote for Trump just to screw the system up…it is broken and needs a good dose of castor oil. The party that nominated Bob Dole, Mitt, and McCain needs a good cleaning out.
To pick a small nit, good-quality CFL bulbs are much superior to incandescent under most circumstances (i.e. NOT Minnesota in January). 😉
“And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain prophesy to you; for I am about to die, and that is the hour in which men are gifted with prophetic power. And I prophesy to you who are my murderers, that immediately after my death punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await you. Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives. But that will not be as you suppose: far otherwise. For I say that there will be more accusers of you than there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained: and as they are younger they will be more severe with you, and you will be more offended at them. For if you think that by killing men you can avoid the accuser censuring your lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honorable; the easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves. This is the prophecy which I utter before my departure, to the judges who have condemned me.”
And that was why they could not permit Sokrates to live.
His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out.
… and this guy gets paid… a LOT… for typing this into a computer. Like, WAY more than your run-of-the-mill SNL/Onion writer.
The wrongness… it burns.
What does Brooks have against Obama? Disinterested narcissists deserve to be president too!
No man is an island. Some men are closed fortresses.
Brooks is the docile, gelded, “house” Republican who poses no threat to the “liberal” plantation, and just loves his Massa ‘Bama. (Indeed, worships the very crease in Massa ‘Bama’s pants!) I call such RINOs and pseudo-conservatives “Uncle Daves.”
“Brooks is the docile, gelded, “house” Republican who poses no threat to the “liberal” plantation,…”
Bilwick,
I think Brooks has been playing a decades-long con game: he’s no Republican: he’s a Social Democrat.
He was introduced that way on this video:
Milton Friedman – Tyranny of the Status Quo – Part 1 – Beneficiaries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRXEk7su62w
Go to time hack 2 minutes 15 seconds and watch the intros.
I’m sure the title “Social Democrat” was fine with Brooksie.
He’s the NYT beard.
True enough, but in many ways he’s a “Trad,” which is what we rebellious libertarians used to call the old-school, traditionalist Russell Kirk-style conservatives. That ingratiates him with “liberals” because it still comes down to a kind of New Toryism. Brooks recently lauded “classical” conservatism, including its “deference to hierarchy.” You could see why the New Tories would love deference to hierarchy. “Yes, milord; thank you, milord. Taxing the bejesus out of me? No problem, milord.”
“You could see why the New Tories would love deference to hierarchy. “Yes, milord; thank you, milord. Taxing the bejesus out of me? No problem, milord.””
😉
Douglas Adams, in Hitchhiker’s Guide, has a section like that. He used ” m’lud” to good effect:
““We won,”
Gee this was the ’80’s…he presaged Obama…..
he repeated, “but that’s no big deal. I mean a medium-sized Galaxy against one little world, and how long did it take us? Clerk of the Court?”
“M’lud?” said the severe little man in black, rising.
“How long, kiddo?”
“It is a trifle difficult, m’lud, to be precise in this matter. Time and distance …”
“Relax, guy, be vague.”
“I hardly like to be vague, m’lud, over such a …”
“Bite the bullet and be it.”
……………………….
He seemed to think because he was the possessor of the finest legal mind ever discovered that gave him the right to behave exactly as he liked, and unfortunately he appeared to be right.
…..Gee presaged Obama and his minions both in and out of government……
“Er, well, m’lud, very approximately, two thousand years,” the Clerk murmured unhappily.
“And how many guys zilched out?”
“Two grillion, m’lud.”