Category Archives: Social Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Trump’s Support

129 Comments

Ann Coulter’s crush the last time around was Chris Christie, and this cycle she’s been fawning over the Donald. But it looks like even she can’t defend him any more. I wonder how many other eyes will clear of scales? As Geraghty writes:

Donald Trump didn’t suddenly change in the past few days, weeks or months. He’s the same guy he always was, the same guy that most of us in the conservative movement and GOP have been staunchly opposing for the past year. He didn’t abruptly become reckless, obnoxious, ill-informed, erratic, hot-tempered, pathologically dishonest, narcissistic, crude and catastrophically unqualified for the presidency overnight. He’s always been that guy, and you denied it and ignored it and hand-waved it away and made excuses every step of the way because you were convinced that you were so much smarter than the rest of us. You were so certain that you had received some superior wavelength giving you special insight into the Donald; only you could tell that it was all an act. Only you could grasp that his constant courting of controversy was just to get attention from the media. Only you could instinctively sense that his style would play brilliantly in the general election and win over working-class Democrats. (SPOILER ALERT: It isn’t.) You insisted that you could “coach him.”

You came to those conclusions not because you’re smarter than the rest of us, but because you’re actually more foolish than the rest of us. You insisted Occam’s Razor couldn’t possibly be true– that Trump acts the way he does because this is who he is, this is the way he is all the time, and he will always be like this. You fooled yourself into believing that Trump was playing this nine-level chess that only you and a few others could perceive and understand. Only you could see the long game.

As he says, there is no long game. I really do think that he’s trying to figure out how to get out of this. Trump is like the dog who chases cars, but now he’s realizing he won’t know what to do if he catches one.

Jim is angry. So am I.

[Update a few minutes later]

Trump castigates Scott Walker for not raising taxes, and thinks that “health care and education” are among the top three government functions.

But yeah, let’s elect this “conservative.”

[Update a couple minutes later]

The culture that created Donald Trump was “liberal,” not conservative. (Scare quotes because it’s not really liberal, it’s leftist.)

[Update a while later]

A top Trump strategist quits and warns America about him.

I didn’t need the warning.

[Thursday-afternoon update]

[Bumped]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

The Republican Race In CA

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The latest polling of likely voters shows a dead heat between Cruz and Trump.

It’s worth noting (as the article doesn’t) that CA is winner-take-all by Congressional District. So if that polling holds, Cruz would probably pick up about half the delegates. But we don’t know what the race will look like by the time CA has come around. Trump may have already taken enough delegates, or there may be a last-minute push on to prevent him.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Molenbeek: A Culture Of Denial

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An analysis from a cultural anthropologist who lived there:

It is nearly impossible to explain to an outsider, but Belgium is a country of six governments, Brussels a city with 19 mayors. These many administrative posts are not filled with competent people. Security services are fragmented and tend to compete with one another. The lack of a strong, central authority may be one of the many quirks of this sometimes charmingly dysfunctional country, but just as it resulted in many botched trials — notably of the Brabant Killers, or “Nijvel Gang” who committed a series of violent raids between 1982 and 1985, and the Dutroux scandal in 1995, to name just two — it also creates the perfect breeding ground for potential terrorists.

But the most important factor is Belgium’s culture of denial. The country’s political debate has been dominated by a complacent progressive elite that firmly believes society can be designed and planned. Observers who point to unpleasant truths such as the high incidence of crime among Moroccan youth and violent tendencies in radical Islam are accused of being propagandists of the extreme-right, and are subsequently ignored and ostracized.

The debate is paralyzed by a paternalistic discourse in which radical Muslim youths are seen, above all, as victims of social and economic exclusion. They in turn internalize this frame of reference, of course, because it arouses sympathy and frees them from taking responsibility for their actions. The former Socialist mayor Philippe Moureax, who governed Molenbeek from 1992 to 2012 as his private fiefdom, perfected this culture of denial and is to a large extent responsible for the current state of affairs in the neighborhood.

I think that Belgium has outlived whatever usefulness it may have ever had. Time to give just it back to Holland and France.

[Saturday-morning update]

It’s not just Molenbeek. “Belgium, my country, is in denial.”

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Is Barack Obama A Socialist, Or A Fascist?

14 Comments

Yes:

One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left.

Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely — and correctly — regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg’s great book “Liberal Fascism” cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists’ consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left’s embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.
Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.

It was in the 1930s, when ugly internal and international actions by Hitler and Mussolini repelled the world, that the left distanced themselves from fascism and its Nazi offshoot — and verbally transferred these totalitarian dictatorships to the right, saddling their opponents with these pariahs.

The real act that broke the Left from Hitler was when he betrayed Stalin.

[Update a while later]

Obama: “No difference between communism and capitalism.” Well, if you ignore the tens millions of citizens murdered by their governments, sure.

[Sunday-morning update]