Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Another Round on Trump

This from a regular reader, professional philosopher, and Trump supporter:

You're disturbed that so many Trump supporters "refuse to admit the man's negatives".  Maybe they do refuse, but I think many of them feel as I do.  He has many negative qualities, and maybe in some ways he's even worse than the average politician, but — as you yourself have often emphasized — we're no longer in a situation where politics is about people with shared loyalties and values coming together to engage in fair rational discussion with each other.  We are in a war.  The left simply hates us, wants to destroy us culturally and maybe personally to while they're at it.  The real American people are facing an existential crisis. 

So what really matters in this situation?  Not the personal failings of any candidate, not even the likelihood that he's sincere or able to do what he says he'll do. What really matters for now is that he is taking the crucial necessary _first step_ toward organizing a real movement to defend America and the west.  What if, when Muslims were poised to invade France, we found out that Charles Martel was actually a child molester?  What if I knew, in 1939, that Churchill was a total fraud and psychopath?  I'd say that in that  kind of situation these considerations make no difference.  If he [Trump] can speak a few basic truths that inspire people to fight back and stand up, for the first and possibly last time, that's all that matters.  (My analogies are extreme, but not _that_ extreme.)  I realize that we won't agree on this; Trumpites and mainstream conservatives are as badly polarized as Trumpites and leftists (which may have deep implications).  But I offer these remarks as a way to understand why the valid criticisms you make of him just don't have much force for me, or for millions of others, I'm assuming.

This is a good response in part because I do reluctantly incline to the view that we are in a war with the Left.  So why should I be concerned with the merely personal foibles and failings of the one man with the best chance of stopping the leftist juggernaut?  Who cares that he is a low life, a vulgarian, a cultural polluter, a hypocrite, a narcissist, an egomaniac, and a serial liar and bullshitter?  One of his most recent lies was the one about not knowing who David Duke is.  But not only did he lie, he lied unnecessarily.  There was no need for him to tell that particular lie since a disavowal of David Duke and the KKK would not have hurt him much, especially since he had already disavowed Duke. This speaks to Trump's lack of good judgment and also perhaps to a lack of seriousness.  Would someone who is serious about winning the presidency lie unnecessarily?  He also demonstrates contempt for his audience in telling a lie that is transparently a lie.

But why should we care about any of this?  One reason is that these are not merely personal defects but defects that could bring down the conservative movement and lead to a victory, perhaps even a landslide victory, by Hillary come November.  This is what lefties are counting on.  They hope Trump will destroy the GOP.  You say you don't care?  But then what party will implement conservative ideas and policies?  The Constitution Party?

Another reason is that it is not clear that Trump is better equipped to defeat Hillary.  Is he better qualified than Cruz?  It is not clear to me or to anyone.  If it is clear to my reader, I should like him to tell me why Trump is a more effective culture warrior than Cruz.  And let's not underestimate the opposition Trump will get in the general election.  Women, minorities, leftists, and a sizeable number of conservatives will align against him.  Among the conservatives, many will not vote at all, and some will vote for Hillary to punish Trump and the GOP for supporting him.

I appreciate the force of my reader's historical analogies.  But let me try one of my own.  Would you have supported the Austrian corporal back in '33 to stop the Communists?  Now  we know what happened after 1933.  Abstract from the sequel and imagine yourself to be a German anti-communist who in '33 is trying to make up his mind about the incendiary outsider.  Would you have rolled the dice? 

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14 responses to “Another Round on Trump”

  1. Jacques Avatar
    Jacques

    Bill,
    Yes, I would have supported Hitler back then.
    Even with hindsight, I think it’s quite defensible to hold that the west should have sided with him. Obviously we can’t know what might have happened in that case. But I suspect that the really bad things we associate with Nazism would have been a lot less bad than they were, and Nazism would have been a more manageable thing than Communism. (In part because we haven’t managed Communism at all, but rather It seems to have managed us.)
    What we did instead was to empower a genocidal dictatorship far worse than Hitler’s. And in consigning half of Europe to many decades of totalitarian hell in order to defeat Nazism, in rationalizing this very strange roll of the dice, we incorporated a quasi-Communist value system that is now metastasizing very fast.
    What we now call ‘political correctness’ is just Nazism with a few details rejigged. Now it’s Aryans who are the untermenschen oppressors while Jews and non-whites are recast as the victim ubermenschen. The people who gave their lives to defeat Nazism were really no different from Nazis, it turns out (cis-gendered privileged eurocentric blah-blah-blah). And what are we supposed to do with Nazis? We are already not allowed to discuss the war in a rational way in most European countries, on pain of prison time. We are already seeing murder, assault and even mass rape of whites excused and ignored when the perpetrators are super-human super-victims; we’re already justifiably afraid to offer the slightest defense of our race or nation (e.g., “All lives matter”). Formal censorship and legal punishments, then re-education camps and official killings are the natural next step, or just a few steps after the next one.
    So I’d say we are both in a tough situation with respect to this analogy. Knowing what we now know about how our roll of the dice back then has actually worked out, are you so sure we were right to take the side of International Communism? That’s definitely not so clear to me. (In case you’re wondering, a lot of people in my family died in the war, not a few in the Nazi camps.)

    Reply
  2. djf Avatar
    djf

    Trump has no genuine views on policy and, in the unlikely event of his election, will revert to his conventional corporate “progressivism,” the path of least resistance. He is part and parcel of the Left, and would, as president, would be more of the same of what we have now. Even on immigration, his position reduces to increasing border security and deporting illegal-alien felons, while increasing legal immigration. People who think he will fight the Left on behalf of his voters are being taken for a ride.
    He is not another Hitler. He is just Hillary with male parts and a comb-over.

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  3. John Avatar
    John

    It’s not really a dice roll since the Republicans couldn’t win the general against a viable Democratic candidate sans the additional voters Trump has brought into the fold. And if Trump doesn’t win the nomination or gets trumped in the convention, those additional voters are not going to show up. Hence, the only dice roll conservatives are facing is Trump or Clinton.

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  4. Wayon Avatar
    Wayon

    “And let’s not underestimate the opposition Trump will get in the general election. Women, minorities, leftists, and a sizeable number of conservatives will align against him. Among the conservatives, many will not vote at all, and some will vote for Hillary to punish Trump and the GOP for supporting him.”
    I say you might be selling Trump short here. Hillary already failed to draw in younger women like Sanders has (to the point of feminists having a meltdown). Hispanics might make up about 17% of the population, but their relative youth means that they have fewer eligible voters, and with their noticeably lower electoral participartion rates than Blacks the electoral weight they have really isn’t that heavy.
    As for not voting or strange bedfellow voting, from looking through discussions on the election I’ve seen claims of Sanders supporters jumping ship to Trump. I can guess “Progressives” who aren’t pleased with Hillary and have see Sanders’ defeat won’t vote.

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  5. Jacques Avatar
    Jacques

    ‘djf’ — Not sure if you mean to address the argument I was making but, if that was the point, you’re misunderstanding. The argument has nothing to do with whether Trump has “genuine views” (though I don’t know how you could know much about that) or any of the other things you mention. The idea is that he is ALREADY doing something just by taking sides with the majority of ordinary people; this is the “crucial necessary first step” regardless of any other issues or problems or considerations. You can’t defend your people unless you can get them to remember who they are, band together and get mad and fight back. The Trump phenomenon is the ONLY thing since possibly Buchanan that has any realistic chance of forming real Americans into a self-aware identity bloc that might then stand up and fight.
    Nothing else matters for now. Unless this first step can be taken there will never again be even a _chance_ that any of these precious conservative ‘policies’ or ‘principles’ (which of course don’t matter to the establishment Republicans anyway) can ever be implemented by anyone. Because there won’t even be an American people or nation anymore. Complaining about Trump’s personality or whatever is like saying “Let’s just not even try to win; let’s not even try to do the only thing that might work; let’s just resign ourselves to dispossession and destruction”. Even if I could be persuaded that Cruz or someone else was just as likely to serve as a focal point for ordinary American identity and anger, why would it make any strategic sense not to support the person who is already doing that, and doing it better and faster? Why not support the thing that seems to be actually already doing this one thing that is the only thing that matters for now?
    Maybe the trouble is that real right-wingers have been pessimistic, impotent losers on the sidelines for so long that they don’t even remember that there’s more to politics than complaining. It’s past time for the streetfighting men, and I could not care less whether the thing that finally gets those men out on the streets is Donald Trump or a soccer game or the Ebola Virus. Is there any reason why anyone should care?

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  6. Tully Borland Avatar
    Tully Borland

    Trump is basically a Democrat.
    He’s on record as supporting universal healthcare in a very candid interview right before he declared to run (and several times since then). He’s also for adding sexual orientation/identity to Civil Rights laws/hate crime laws, he’s pro-gay “marriage,” he’s anti-religion vs. LGBT (e.g. RFRA laws), and his stance on abortion is vague and he’s probably not being honest about being pro-life (but who knows for sure what he’s telling the truth about).
    He’s running on changing people’s lives for the better at the federal level, not by honoring federalism and the president’s limited role, but instead by executive actions (in the non-technical sense) and the sheer force of his charm and personality. HE is going to make America great again rather than getting the federal government out of the way so that the American people can make it great again. Classic Democratic move.
    About the only things he’s consistent on are immigration and anti-globalization, and his actual policies on the latter are pretty vague; he wants to bring in more (legal) immigrants to compensate for the illegals he’s somehow going to round up.
    On a best case scenario if he wins the presidency, he turns out to be a good president. It’s logically possible. But how likely is it? We have 2 recent examples of non-politicians very much like Trump, Arnold and Jesse “The Body.” Both turned out to be disasters from a conservative point of view (or most any point of view!). In the case of Arnold, Republicans in California are still dealing with the fallout.
    I suspect that if Trump were to win, Republicans would be in greater danger of losing the Senate and perhaps even the House since many would find, given their constituencies, that they can’t run on Trump’s coattails; they will have to distance themselves from Trump as well as the Democrats they are running against. A Trump candidacy will be a hindrance to many running for office (think of all the stupid things he says as the most prominent party member which they’ll have to discredit). A worst case scenario is that Trump wins, Republicans lose the Senate, Trump is a disaster as president, Republicans lose the House within 5 years, and a Democrat is elected after 4 years of a largely failed presidency.
    Which would be worse: that latter scenario or Hillary beating Trump? If Hillary were to beat Trump, Republicans would at least be able to unite AGAINST her and come together in four years with a candidate like Cruz who is anti-establishment enough to garner support but not nearly as indecent and mendacious as Trump. In fact, were the Trump-Phenomenon non-existent this year, I suspect Cruz would already be in the driver’s seat since he’d be the only anti-establishment candidate. It’s too bad they had to run in the same year.

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  7. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432237/donald-trump-why-i-cant-vote-trump-nevertrump

    Reply
  8. Tully Borland Avatar
    Tully Borland

    Jacques,
    You seem to be banking on the fact that the ceiling for Trump is much higher than it currently appears. The last national head to head polls had Trump getting trounced by Hillary, Hillary losing to Rubio, and Hillary in a statistical dead heat with Cruz. Yes, Trump’s ability to thump a rival is so far unparalleled on the GOP side, but his ability to say stupid things and alienate potential voters is at least as powerful. He’s nowhere close to having the support of a majority of Republicans on his side, and he has the highest unfavorability rating.
    So far he’s faced Republicans who have mostly tried to remain “above the fray.” Only recently have Cruz and Rubio stooped to his level (mostly Rubio) with some effect. (The media has been playing up Trump’s success, but Cruz and Rubio actually did better yesterday than expected presumably in part because they double-teamed Trump and gave him a taste of his own medicine). But he has not faced Hillary and the media in an all out assault against him where his insane words will be used to good effect against him.
    I don’t think Trump is at all necessary to galvanize the right. If (e.g.) Cruz were to win, they would have all the motivation to galvanize thanks to Hillary Clinton running in opposition. I think you’re underestimating the power that being AGAINST something and someone will have.
    Of course, you might counter by saying what a number of progressives have said about Cruz: That–given his conservatism–he’s much more “dangerous” than Trump. Perhaps Cruz would galvanize the left even more than Trump. But then perhaps the right returns such galvanization in kind.

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  9. thomas_h Avatar
    thomas_h

    “Would you have supported the Austrian corporal back in ’33 to stop the Communists? Now we know what happened after 1933.”
    There is time for supporting Austrian corporal and time to fight him. We didn’t fight him in 1933 – true. That’s why we had to align ourselves with Georgian vampire in 1941.

    Reply
  10. Jacques Avatar
    Jacques

    Hi Bill,
    I think we’re just talking about different things. You seem to be mainly (or only?) concerned to figure out who can defeat Hillary, win an election, get enough votes, etc. I don’t care about that. In fact I think electoral politics in our degenerate culture is disgusting and I think it’s demeaning for any decent person to get invested in any particular outcome. I support Trump in the sense that I am all in favor of the basic persona he’s projecting and the powerful movement that is coalescing around him. Unlike any other person in recent history (including Cruz the conservative) Trump is eliciting healthy nationalism and patriotism, which may lead to white working class Americans (and maybe others) forming a self-conscious identitarian bloc. That has to happen very soon, or America is finished. Lots of the people who support Trump are not ‘conservatives’. Most probably don’t care about what exactly the constitution means or how exactly health care is going to work. They want the alien invasion to stop; they want the government to stop its war on their religion and culture and people; they want some chance at a job and a future. So even if Cruz could galvanize the right just as well as Trump, or Cruz plus Hillary could do so, I don’t _want_ to see the country divided into a right and a left. Especially if the division is due to disagreements over health care or gay marriage or things like that. These are details when your nation is facing extinction. Rather, I want to see the mainstream right destroyed (and the left too), so that it can be replaced by a nationalist movement. Only a strong nationalist movement can save the nation and deal with the traitors on both ‘right’ and left. If that means the end of the Republicans and ‘conservatism’, so be it. But this has little to do with the largely meaningless election rituals that western pseudo-democracies carry out every few years.

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  11. Jacques Avatar
    Jacques

    Tully,
    It seems absurd to say that “Trump is basically a democrat”. Can you really imagine any Democrat saying that many illegal aliens are criminals? Or that America needs to make Mexico pay for the wall to keep them out? Is that “basically” the position of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? Read his statement on immigration. If there’s one thing that unites the Left and the Democrats, it’s the belief that America must be racially transformed, that the immigrants must keep on coming forever, legally or not. On this issue, at the very heart of modern Leftism and political correctness, almost every _Republican_ except Trump is basically a Democrat. In fact their ‘conservative’ beliefs are indistinguishable from the beliefs of actual Marxist-Leninists, extreme left-libertarians, anarchists, etc. By today’s standards, Trump’s position on this most important of all the issues is far to the right of almost every public figure in the western world.
    You say that “he’s running on changing people’s lives for the better at the federal level, not by honoring federalism and the president’s limited role”. Well, maybe in some respects. But almost every Republican in living memory has implemented exactly the same kinds policies (though maybe without running on them). Republicans are not different from Democrats in this way. The only difference is that Democrats are generally a lot more honest about their Big Government philosophy. Anyway, worrying about “federalism and the limited role of the president” seems a bit misguided when you’re (basically) in a war.

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  12. thomas_h Avatar
    thomas_h

    In the above comment it should be “ally ourselves”, not “align ourselves”. Sorry.

    Reply
  13. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    >> I support Trump in the sense that I am all in favor of the basic persona he’s projecting and the powerful movement that is coalescing around him. << But it is not a political movement? You say you are not interested in winning elections. So you are interested in what exactly? A nationalist, white supremacist dictatorship in which there are no elections?

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  14. Jacques Avatar
    Jacques

    “white supremacist dictatorship in which there are no elections”
    No, that’s not what I favor. I’d be happy to have meaningful, intelligent elections within a healthy culture. We’re a million miles from that at the moment. Elections are not very important, at any rate. On things that really matter, the elites will just find ways to exploit the people and destroy the culture no matter what. The invaders will keep coming, the abortions will keep getting done, etc. Constitution or election or ‘rule of law’ are now just fictions they invoke when useful.
    “It is not a political movement?”
    It’s political, sure, in some broad and fundamental sense. It’s more meaningfully political than almost anything else that’s happened in decades. But politics has many dimensions; for me all that matters right now is the moral-spiritual-cultural-personal dimension. Patriots and normal people have to wake up, band together, remember themselves… Unless that happens no election will ever matter, and soon no election will ever be winnable by the ‘right’ anyway. (‘Conservatives’ will have imported a new permanent Democrat super-majority.)
    Right now the American people, and the west in general, are brainwashed and spiritually sick. It’s a major development for America to begin to express itself against the traitors and the fake party system, etc. Of course, I certainly don’t mind if Trump wins the general election! But I think the attempt to get him to win is more important for what it may do on a psychic and spiritual level.

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