The Latest Trumpadoo

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Introduction

So here are a few random thoughts on the latest iteration of our great republican hokey pokey. Have you ever read color commentary on res publicae hoci poci, to use Cato’s oft abused phrase? Well, that’s all anybody reads anymore, right? But here goes anyhow.Inauguration

Shock and Aw, Shucks

The first thing to say, as a lead in to others, has to to do with the one possible thing that might happen that would make me happy that Ted Cruz lost, and that would be if he comes around to endorsing Trump. He says he is “assessing,” which is more than I think he ought to be doing, but at least he has not yet lined up to be embarrassed, as has happened with Rubio, Ryan, Priebus, Gingrich, et al.

We all endorsed the dumpster fire, but lo! It continueth to burn. We speak earnestly unto it, but it heedeth not. We are most seriously displeased.

Surprise!

This last business with the judge of Mexican descent was the 528th instance of Trump doing exactly what Trump does, which is bloviate. He has done it over and over. It got him the nomination. Having secured the nomination by that means, he continued to do what he does best, which is to be him, and all the naifs who endorsed him are acting astonished and surprised. Like this was a new thing!

Ryan said that what Trump said was “the textbook definition of racism.” Actually what we are looking at is a textbook display of identity politics, which the establishment has insisted we dwell in for the last generation or more. I do not say this in defense of Trump — I simply say that on this point he is no more corrupt than thousands of others, and no more corrupt than those who are screeching at him. Still, that’s pretty corrupt.

What this may be leading up to is a concerted effort to raise enough of a stink as to justify an attempt to steal the nomination from Trump at the convention. The party has the physical means of doing it (via rule changes), but what they currently lack is plausible justification. It would be stealing in any case, but they couldn’t have it look too obviously like stealing. This orchestrated display of indignation over this latest “racism” appears to be something they are beta testing as possible cover.

I agree that when Trump plays identity politics, he does it knee deep in gaucheries. He is your walking wince worthy guy. But he is simply working the other end of the same scam that was been imposed on us by all the respectable people, and a number of people have noticed it. Trump represents identity politics push-back, and there is no righteous way to oppose it without opposing the whole shebang. But you are only going to get that from a conservative — i.e. no one on the stage at present.

On Eating Your Own Cooking

Trump wants a judge to recuse himself just because he is Mexican? How dare you!  . . . says the country that has run an affirmative action regime on our colleges, that forces the military to lower standards so that women can make it through training, that bustles names like Sotomayor to the front of the SCOTUS nomination line because Latina judges would “rule differently,” and that elects a lightweight professor of homeopathic constitutional law to the presidency just because he is brown. This is why we have expressions like “for the love of Pete.” And please overlook the connection to La Raza.

You cannot create a hyper-race-conscious society, and then police people in it for being hyper-race-conscious. You can’t make us all live on the bottom of the pool and then blame us for being wet.

But that said, I do agree that Trump is a loser. That is why, to borrow the words of the prophet Micah, he is just the spokesman for this people. All I have to say to the GOP is this — you picked him, you endorsed him, you own him. Deal with it.

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Wesley Sims
Wesley Sims
7 years ago

Let us suppose that Trump merely said that the judge was a member of a La Raza-related group or a lawyers group that advocated boycotting his businesses.

Most reasonable people would have recognized that such is relevant and a rational issue, but, would anybody have cared?

So, he says “Mexican” rather than “La Raza.” You may think it makes him look a fool, but it actually got people into looking at who the judge is.

jillybean
jillybean
7 years ago
Reply to  Wesley Sims

It didn’t get me looking at who the judge is. It got me wondering how many days Trump can spend in the oval office before he starts slinging racist and ethnic remarks at world leaders. I understand that there is a significant number of people in this country who look forward to his doing this. But why?

Jonathan
Jonathan
7 years ago
Reply to  Wesley Sims

But he is not a member of La Raza. He is a member of an entirely different group, which is simply a Hispanic Lawyers Association, which happens to have “La Raza” in its name because that’s Mexican for “Hispanic”.

What did you find when you started looking into “who the judge is”? That he spent 27 years as a prosecutor of drug crime along the border, so successful in putting cartel members in jail that he had a hit put on him by the Felix Cartel and ended up getting nominated to the judiciary by a Republican governor?

ashv
ashv
7 years ago
Reply to  Wesley Sims

Here’s another angle. Trump has gotten everybody up to and including the New York Times to now declaim that a judge’s race doesn’t matter — which will be a nice talking point when Supreme Court justices are discussed (and how White Trump’s list of potential nominees is).

Malachi
Malachi
7 years ago

“Trump wants a judge to recuse himself just because he is Mexican? How dare you! . . . says the country that has run an affirmative action regime on our colleges, that forces the military to lower standards so that women can make it through training, that bustles names like Sotomayor to the front of the SCOTUS nomination line because Latina judges would “rule differently,” and that elects a lightweight professor of homeopathic constitutional law to the presidency just because he is brown.”

Can we somehow get this reduced to a bumper sticker??

Rob Steele
Rob Steele
7 years ago

You’re starting to sound like Habakkuk after God mentions the Chaldeans.

Nord357
Nord357
7 years ago

Now that is hilarious except its real.Now to quote or paraphrase ,my new favorite political meme.
OK this isn’t funny anymore. where are the real presidential candidates?

Capndweeb
Capndweeb
7 years ago

“We all endorsed the dumpster fire, but lo! It continueth to burn. We speak earnestly unto it, but it heedeth not. We are most seriously displeased.” –Doug Wilson
“Morticia, speak KJV to me!” –Gomez Addams (With slight modification.)

Ben
Ben
7 years ago

I’m amazed at the amount of abuse so many conservative Christians are heaping upon a man who is trying to preserve the very society they claim to cherish so much. Has the left really been this successful in guilting and shaming people like us, that we lash out and really, literally screech at someone whose side we should be on, just because he’s a little uncouth for our tastes? Think about it: When conservative Christians criticize the Clintons and Obamas of the world, do they act this ravenously vitriolic and hysterical? That has not been my experience. I think it’s… Read more »

jigawatt
jigawatt
7 years ago
Reply to  Ben

… just because he’s a little uncouth for our tastes?

Speak for yourself, Ben.

jillybean
jillybean
7 years ago
Reply to  Ben

Is “preserving society” kind of a code phrase for trying to keep America white and nominally Christian? Does it really come down to putting up a wall, deporting illegals, and not letting in any more Muslims?

Ben
Ben
7 years ago
Reply to  jillybean

No, it is maintaining a society that values and upholds Western legal traditions founded on private property as well as self-ownership and self-government. It so happens that white Christians instituted these things, but that does not mean that only white Christians can partake of them.

Elros
Elros
7 years ago
Reply to  Ben

Actually only certain English subgroups did, at least here in America. The other white ethnicities of Europe don’t do it all quite as well, but they do qualify under the broader title of “Western Civilization”.

Hispanic and African cultures haven’t yet demonstrated the ability to maintain civilization at our level yet on their own. Africa, for example, has only been thoroughly exposed to the Gospel for 100 years.

The various white ethnicities of Europe took 1000 years of being exposed to Christianity before they created Western civilization.

Islamic civilization is a different civilization altogether, and an opposing one.

Jonathan
Jonathan
7 years ago
Reply to  Ben

I love that one of the biggest promoters of eminent domain is being pushed forward as the guy who “upholds Western traditions founded on private property”.

Trump hasn’t shown that he will respect the rule of law or limitations on power at all except when they benefit him, much less that he gives the slightest care in the world to “Western legal traditions”.

Ben
Ben
7 years ago
Reply to  Jonathan

Trump has a lot of bad views, but I’m referring mainly to his stances on immigration as well as foreign policy. It does seem clear that he wants to protect America from the destruction wrought by the welfare leeches and terrorists that come from other countries. On foreign policy, he is the least interventionist of all the candidates, including Clinton. It is my contention that the neoconservative agenda is the biggest threat to our way of life. To see that movement discredited (as I think Trump has done to some extent and will continue to do) is a very welcome… Read more »

timothy
timothy
7 years ago
Reply to  Jonathan

Eminent Domain is in the Constitution.

Magnus Gungir
Magnus Gungir
7 years ago
Reply to  Ben

I think the modernist assumptions that built post-WWII American culture that has been taken as synonymous with the society our Founders envisioned is a) grossly misguided and b) the precise reason why our society is in the state that it is in, at this point. It seems to me that if Christians went about being Christians in the context of their own sphere, instead of pining for and attempting to reconstitute a former utopia by force (especially at the behest of a philanderous, self-serving vulgarian), we’d enjoy a true revitalization of culture and society that would honor Christ and promote… Read more »

timothy
timothy
7 years ago
Reply to  Magnus Gungir

Attempting?

Ben
Ben
7 years ago
Reply to  Magnus Gungir

Nobody’s suggesting that anything even remotely close to a utopia can be achieved by electing Trump. I don’t know if it’s even possible to preserve Western Civilization by electing someone to office. I’m just pointing out the absurdity of the fact that so many Christians heap so much abuse on the only man who shows even the slightest interest in preserving the very society they claim to care so much about, as well as how baffling it is that they can’t see the current political system as anything other than a godless, globalist, anti-human institution bent on picking this supposedly… Read more »

Jonathan
Jonathan
7 years ago
Reply to  Ben

Jerry Falwell Jr. came pretty close to saying what you think no one has said: He’s perfectly suited to serve as the political leader, and I think that gives evangelicals comfort. That’s why a large majority of them are supporting him, and I think maybe after the country is saved and restored, perhaps evangelicals will start voting in traditional patterns again. I’d suggest that “saved and restored” are inappropriate words in that context, and could suggest a really serious issue in Falwell’s theology. I’d be interested in Falwell explaining exactly what he meant by that, and why he uses words… Read more »

ashv
ashv
7 years ago

“Trump is a loser” sounds like wishful thinking from here. Success isn’t the same as virtue (and more relevantly, it’s definitely not the same as the appearance of virtue.)

Doug Wright
Doug Wright
7 years ago

I think you hung out with Hitchens too much; you think by adding words to other awkward words you get wit: not true. That’s ok, I know, it’s hard. Hard to condemn the race-baiters then maintain your egalitarian seeker friendly composure.

ashv
ashv
7 years ago

You may not be interested in identity politics, neighbour, but identity politics is interested in you. Forget the judge, the police chief of San Jose is a member of La Raza — the police chief whose department made zero arrests while hundreds of Hispanics rioted and assaulted people at the Trump rally.

Though I’m sure this doesn’t matter in Idaho. At least Mormons are white.

othernews
othernews
7 years ago

In other news, Switzerland just voted on a referendum to have the government pay a Universal Basic Income to all its citizens, unconditionally. The referendum failed 77% to 23%, but is likely to come back up, and is also being considered in Canada and elsewhere. The motive for UBI seems to be based on fear of automation. “As technology disadvantages more people with limited learning abilities (roughly a quarter of humanity and growing), we will have to find some way to support the unemployable. Free subsistence is at odds with the value systems of nearly all societies and religious tenets.… Read more »

ashv
ashv
7 years ago
Reply to  othernews

I’ve long been in favour of a guaranteed-employment plan for oppressed minorities.

katecho
katecho
7 years ago
Reply to  ashv

UBI seems to be unrelated to employment at all. It’s a simple income guarantee, without any expectation of labor or productivity. What could possibly go wrong? Although, it does appear that automation is going to put more pressure on an already fragile economy. It suggests that the promised automation is going to break the rules about money, or about work. Or it may just reset the whole economy back a few centuries. I admit that I don’t see how teens are going to get job skills when all of their usual entry level jobs are being widely automated. Even if… Read more »

arwenb
arwenb
7 years ago
Reply to  katecho

As near as I can tell, we don’t have to worry about the robots, because the $15 minimum wage is already doing the teenagers out of a job.

Dunsworth
Dunsworth
7 years ago
Reply to  arwenb

The robots will be exacerbated by the minimum wage, that’s why the robots happen.

mkt
mkt
7 years ago
katecho
katecho
7 years ago
Reply to  mkt

Quite informative.

Jonathan
Jonathan
7 years ago

“And please overlook the connection to La Raza.” You want to explain what the connection to La Raza is that you wish to overlook? If you’re referring to the National Council of La Raza, which is what virtually everyone who simply says “La Raza” in reference to a particular organization is talking about, then there’s no connection to the judge whatsoever. If you mean a local Hispanic lawyer’s group that has nothing to do with Mexico, nothing to do with politics, and in no way suggests that the judge should be recusing himself from the case…then I don’t get the… Read more »

mkt
mkt
7 years ago
Reply to  Jonathan

“If you mean a local Hispanic lawyer’s group that has nothing to do with Mexico, nothing to do with politics”

So you looked at one MSM source and believed it hook, line and sinker? Do some more research on La Raza. Here’s an article from 10 years ago, so it’s not at all tainted by the current controversy: http://humanevents.com/2006/04/07/emexclusive-emthe-truth-about-la-raza/

And a more recent one: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263143/trump-right-be-suspicious-judge-matthew-vadum

Jonathan
Jonathan
7 years ago
Reply to  mkt

That human events article doesn’t say a thing about the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, or anything that remotely describes any of their activities. It just does the same thing that Trump is doing – describes the activities of the National Council of La Raza and then pulls a bait-and-switch that paints anything with “la raza” in the name with the same brush. The second article, claiming that “La Raza” means “Master Race”, is just laughable. I don’t need to rely on what the mainstream media says – I’ve known actual Latino people and been able to speak Spanish… Read more »

Matt
Matt
7 years ago

Conservatives have been playing identity politics for 40 years at least. Of course it isn’t called that, it’s just good honest principles when they do it. A good part of Trump’s appeal is wrapped up in identity politics, and it wasn’t postgraduate Race Studies programs that spawned it. “…elects a lightweight professor of homeopathic constitutional law to the presidency just because he is brown.” Really? He wasn’t elected because of, oh I don’t know, 8+ years of abject failure by one of the worst administrations in US history that the other guy promised to double down on? You want a… Read more »

ashv
ashv
7 years ago
Reply to  Matt

Internment camps for the Japanese during WW2 was the right choice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident

(The rest of your post isn’t worth responding to; it isn’t even wrong.)

Matt
Matt
7 years ago
Reply to  ashv

It certainly wasn’t the right choice, as noted by everyone FDR tasked with studying the issue. But the point is that America always has been and probably always will be obsessed with race. This is the country that invented the one drop rule after all. The historical blindness on display in conservative boilerplate is incredible.

ashv
ashv
7 years ago
Reply to  Matt

“Obsessed with race” compared to what or whom? America has been a multicultural empire since the beginning, and it’s hardly the first.

Jonathan
Jonathan
7 years ago
Reply to  ashv

The American Government’s own Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians actually found that Japanese Internship was the wrong choice, and Ronald Reagan officially apologized for it and paid more than a billion dollars in reparations to the victims. This isn’t revisionist history – as Matt pointed out, it was the conclusion of FDR’s own men. In 1941 he tasked Curtis Munson with evaluating Japanese loyalty, and Munson found that there was no reason to worry about people of Japanese ethnicity, but ONLY Japanese nationals themselves. “The story was all the same. There is no Japanese `problem’ on the… Read more »

ashv
ashv
7 years ago
Reply to  Jonathan

tl;dr

Jonathan
Jonathan
7 years ago
Reply to  ashv

That explains a lot about the quality of the information you present here.

mkt
mkt
7 years ago
Reply to  Matt

Cue the SJW…

“8+ years of abject failure by one of the worst administrations in US history…” Don’t talk about your man Obama like that! We’ve had 7+ unprecedented years of zero interest rates and the GDP has remained below 3%…well below it right now. That’s what tax/regulate/spend will do for you…even when you turn the money-printing machines on.

And Bush was pretty bad, too, but mostly because he couldn’t control spending either.

Matt
Matt
7 years ago
Reply to  mkt

Obama is mediocre. Bush was a disaster whose abysmal record singlehandedly destroyed the GOP presidential prospects in 2008. And that was true even for a good candidate–the Crazy and Stupid duo never had a chance. If you think that’s “SJW”, then conservatives have further to go than I thought to return to sanity.

mkt
mkt
7 years ago
Reply to  Matt

“Obama is mediocre.” Yeah, a guy who’s been a disaster on every front, and has used every possible chance to play the race card and shove LGBQT down our throats. Mediocre. Just like your comment.

Jonathan
Jonathan
7 years ago
Reply to  mkt

I’m not an Obama fan, and have pretty serious issues with him in a number of areas. But he’s a rather typical US president, which means he’s been bad for the country but pretty much in the ways that every president is. Saying that he’s been a “disaster on every front” is ridiculous. The easiest way to evaluate this is to look at the claims of the horrible things people said would happen under an Obama presidency, and look at what actually happened. Remember James Dobson’s “2012” letter? That would have been a disaster on every front. Want to make… Read more »

JohnM
JohnM
7 years ago
Reply to  Jonathan

After a cursory search I haven’t been able to find Dobson’s 2012 letter, just references indicating some of the content. From what I’ve read I’d say it mostly didn’t come true, but some of it did come true, or at least has approached coming true. Again, I haven’t read the letter itself.

Jonathan
Jonathan
7 years ago
Reply to  JohnM

Here’s the letter.

http://www.wnd.com/files/Focusletter.pdf

Dobson said all of these things were “possible or even likely” and were the “natural result” of an Obama presidency. Yet the large majority didn’t come true, and the ones that did come true only came true in some partial way that didn’t look like nearly the disaster that Dobson predicted, and often came about with little to do with Obama.

JohnM
JohnM
7 years ago
Reply to  Jonathan

Thanks. To be fair Dobson did say “This letter is not “predicting” that all of the imaginative future “events” named in this letter will happen.”

Actually after having read it I think rather more of it came true, or close to true, than I was initially thinking, even if some of it came nowhere near. I agree the blame for what did come true is not all attributable to Obama being President, but I think his being President was a contributing factor to some of it too.

JohnM
JohnM
7 years ago
Reply to  Matt

“Bush was a disaster whose abysmal record singlehandedly destroyed the GOP presidential prospects in 2008.”

If there is any one point on which conservatives and liberals can agree it ought to be that one.

ashv
ashv
7 years ago

Don’t worry, conservatives, Top Men are working out how to frustrate President Trump’s plans: https://www.lawfareblog.com/more-donald-trump-and-justice-department

Daithi_Dubh
Daithi_Dubh
7 years ago

YAWN!!!

I’ve long since lowered my expectations about saving this “nation.” Helps immensely with my stress levels!

Trump will be Trump, and the Left/”Right” Establishment will continue being who they are!

Our energies are needed elsewhere.

In the meantime, didn’t somebody say something about popcorn?

andrewlohr
andrewlohr
7 years ago

“Wise Hispanic woman”: able-ist, racist, and sexist. Eh?

timothy
timothy
7 years ago

The San Diego Lawyers Association–which, we are assured has absolutely NOTHING to do with La Raza–has a link to La Raza on their website’s sidebar.

http://sdlrla.com/