So what happens when you take a ruling class as wicked and as corrupt as ours is, and you insist that they obsess over what might be called “appearance ethics”? You get hypocrisy on stilts, that’s what happens.
In the post-Watergate era, the nation became consumed with the appearance of impropriety. And while it is true that upright citizens can be rightly concerned with “how it looks,” the people who are really good at how it looks are hypocrites. They are consumed with how it looks, and so it is that appearance ethics are their bread and butter.
When uprightness is defined by the appearances, and an industry has arisen by which the “right” people can manage and control the appearances, said industry is going to do its darnedest to keep its seat, parked right there beside all the levers and switches. In our case, those levers and switches are made up of ethics commissions, the media, blue ribbon panels, the special counsel laws, the way things are done in Washington, the received wisdom, the pundit class, the phylactery manufacturers, and so on.
Enter Donald Trump, the disheveled nemesis of appearances, the wrecking ball of propriety.
I think that at some point it is going to dawn on somebody that the old tricks are not working anymore, at least not the way they used to. Trump keeps doing what he does, and the establishment keeps freaking out the way it does, and I think we can see the law of diminishing returns settling in. For example, consider the recent criminal leaks from the special counsel’s investigation—talk about appearances—and realize that according to the script we are supposed to feel like Woodward and Bernstein are hot on the trail, and the glory days of taking out a president are almost upon us again, but what we actually feel is that the intelligence agencies are far more politicized and corrupt than we thought. And we thought it was pretty bad.
And so then we had the Ossoff/Handel race last night. This was going to be the race that presaged Trump’s humiliation in 2018, when the Democrats would ride a wave election in such glorious numbers that they would be able to IMPEACH somebody. And so the media (remember they are working every instrument they control) set the stage for this special election to be a referendum on Trump, except that now it isn’t anymore. The race that had national implications that could not possibly be ignored is a race that got dropped like a hot rock as soon as the race was called.
The establishment is pulling out all the stops, trying to use absolutely everything they control in order to stop something that their levers and switches are apparently not connected to. It is as though the ruling class, a Grand Prix driver taking the turns at 80 mph in rural France, suddenly found itself sitting in a plastic car outside Safeway, asking mother for another quarter so that they could bounce along turning a plastic wheel that didn’t do anything. The feeling, as I am sure you might recognize, would be a disconcerting one.
And as this circus maximus has been going on, and Trump’s administration is described (again) as being on its last legs, I have more than once wondered if our national opinion-meisters are being played. Inside the Beltway we do have the grease fires, true enough, with the usual suspects managing a continual supply of grease. But outside the Beltway, things keep happening—the Paris accords, sane judges appointed, and so on. The old haunting words of Buffalo Springfield come back to tease us. Something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.
Since I have done it plenty already, I will not spend any time here explaining what I am not saying. I will only say that the wrecking ball aspect of this is a mercy from God.
I think we’re seeing a lot of the wicked falling into the traps they laid for us. It’s glorious.
Always a bit confused by you who consider the “ruling class” and who you don’t consider the “ruling class”. So far, this all still has the appearance of infighting between different elements of the ruling class themselves, the rulers appear quite well positioned to stay on top at everyone else’s expense, and I’m still waiting to see where we’ll possibly come out the better for it.
Okay, I am forced into yet another wild, lunatic raving which will almost certainly have me labeled as nut-job, but so be it: During the campaign season, I and numerous other Christians were praying that the LORD God would somehow, by some miracle, put into place in our beloved nation a good and godly President. I prayed for someone who would bring glory to the name of Jesus Christ. We got Donald Trump. And, we got him in a miraculous fashion. None of the pundits thought he had a chance. In fact, the early election returns showed Hillary garnering all… Read more »
Daniel, are you implying God’s mysterious ways may bless a Trump demise to make room for President Pence?
Bingo.
This is well said. “Enter Donald Trump, the disheveled nemesis of appearances, the wrecking ball of propriety.” Amen! I think being a “wrecking ball of propriety” is a long forgotten Christian skill in the Western world. We forget the scandalous nature of the cross, the impropriety of Jesus Christ Himself. We’re so comfortable, we’ve forgotten that our job is actually to, “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I am NOT comparing Trump to God, I am simply saying he is a blessing in many ways, a mercy from God, who can help us to learn some long forgotten skills,… Read more »
I know that my church could use a good Temple Court stampede right about now! But since we don’t do animal sacrifice anymore, we are remarkably short on ready livestock! ????????????
I like to BBQ sacred cows…… :)
Come now, if we’re going to BBQ, it really must be a pig on that altar/grill.
“Something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.” Oh, I think it’s pretty clear… The Washington “ruling class” private frat party is over (or getting there). Everyday the Kimono is being widened further to show the inherent corruption and deceit, including the weasels in the mainstream leftist media who can’t seem to find the truth with both hands and flashlight. What we have is a no nonsense developer from Brooklyn at the helm of the Executive Branch doing what he believes is the better way to right America’s healed-over ship. And guess what, it’s working. (Remember, he’s from Brooklyn,… Read more »
Oh, let me offer a couple of alternative hypotheses. First, only five months into his term, Trump has worse poll numbers than Nixon did at the height of Watergate. He lost the popular vote by 3 million and, with the exception of his 35% or so base (disproportionately represented here), is pretty thoroughly reviled. The reason he is president is not that he has a popular mandate, but because of an electoral college system that enables someone to get elected without a popular mandate. And as for those four House losses, all deep red districts. Why is it surprising that… Read more »
‘Check, the electoral college, is a check and balance built into the U. S. Constitution. Both parties have benefited from it from time to time. I wonder if North Korea has a popular vote statute for party chairman? I hear that North Korea is a workers paradise! Perhaps you should try living in a country more in line with your leftist ummmm, opinion? ???????????? Finally ‘check, you do understand that the “golden shower dossier” re: DJT was fake, don’t you? Who would concoct or propagate such nifty falsehoods? Oh right! Leftists.???? Anyway, thanks for your contributions to the current circus!… Read more »
No, the electoral college has not benefited both parties. Four times in our history, it has taken the presidency away from the candidate who won the popular vote, and all four times it resulted in a Republican gaining the presidency despite the Democrat having won the popular vote. As to it being a check and balance, the question is what exactly was it intended to check and balance, and I think the answer to that is obvious: To make it harder for progressives to win elections. The Federalist Papers actually admit as much. But as interesting as all that is,… Read more »
Whoops! wrong again ‘chek! “The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The founding fathers established it in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.” A presidential election has never been “taken away from the candidate who won the popular vote” because the popular vote is not the constitutional statute for electing a president. Simple fact ‘chek, not “non-sequiters, ad hominems, and generic slurs about liberals.” You have your own erroneous opinion on this point, not an “argument”. As… Read more »
I don’t *know* if the Golden Shower story is true or not, and unless you’ve got inside information neither do you, but I do know that I spent five years doing criminal defense work, I’ve been around enough guilty people to know how guilty people act, and he sure is acting guilty. And what does North Korea have to do with anything? North Korea is a non sequiter. I understand the political realities of how we got the electoral college in the first place. It doesn’t change that you’re wrong in your statement that it’s benefited both parties, as four… Read more »
Krychek_2, You are framing the discussion in a skewed manner. Last year in the NBA, the Golden State Warriors won more games than any in history, and yet, the Cavs won the championship that year. Are the NBA rules skewed against the Warriors? No, the rules are the rules. They are established for good reasons. Instead of arguing that the Electoral College is skewed, you should be arguing that the proper mode of election is the popular vote. We can have the same discussion our founders did. Plus, it is not skewed against progressives. It was the progressives of the… Read more »
Not worth trying to convince…truthful arguments are lost on those who do not wish to see. Even Jesus ran into this during his Earthly tenure.
Actually I am arguing both: The EC is skewed, and in any event it has outlived its usefulness and should be replaced by the popular vote, and in this case produced a catastrophic result that would have been avoided without the EC. I’m not disputing that the current rules are the current rules, but rather that they should be changed. My college political science professor calculated that it is possible to have nearly 70% of the popular vote in a two-person race and still lose the EC. Even if I were wrong about the intent to maintain conservatives in power,… Read more »
More later, but the founders set up the constitution to be amended. If you don’t like the EC, propose an amendment . Because the EC is a brilliant cleck and balance, it is unlikely to change, but even if it did, coalition government is the common “next best thing”.
For instance 57% of the country voted against Bill Clinton, but he easily won the EC. If we had coalition government, he might have ended up like Teresa May.
Hence the EC benefited Bill Clinton. ????
Bill Clinton got more votes than any other candidate in that election. And without it, we could either have a parliamentary system with coalitions, or we could move to a runoff between the top two vote getters. How Bill Clinton would have fared in either of those systems is anyone’s guess. But more to the point: If Donald Trump had won fair and square, I wouldn’t be happy about it, but I would acknowledge that he won fair and square. I do not see how a system in which 80,000 votes in three states can cancel 30 million votes in… Read more »
Again ‘check, Bill Clinton won the EC, I accepted that at the time, as I have every presidential election in my lifetime.
The EC remains a brilliant check and balance, as intended.
It remains an inherently great way to decentralize power, and that is actually your complaint.
Your (dishonest) insistence that conservatives are for the EC, only when their candidate wins, remains a red herring! (On stilts!)
(You have to admit that a red herring on stilts is a pretty cool mental image!????????)
Actually, we don’t have any data on whether conservatives would favor the electoral college when their candidate loses because the only times the EC has given the presidency to someone who lost the popular vote, it was a Republican who benefited. And yes, Bill Clinton won the EC; he also got more votes that election than any other candidate; what’s your point?
That red herrings on stilts are pretty funny!????????
Krychek_2 wrote: If you want to actually engage my arguments, let me know. I’ve already engaged Krychek_2’s whining about the electoral college. The founders certainly rejected Krychek_2’s democratic popular vote ideology. And there is nothing at all to be ashamed of about that. Good for them. Tyranny of the majority ought to be rejected outright. However, Krychek_2 whines on as if his particular party has been snubbed and punished, while the Republicans have been rewarded. That’s anachronistic nonsense. The founders didn’t reject democracy for partisan reasons. They rejected it for sound civic reasons, and concerns about justice. It had nothing… Read more »
And why is tyranny of the minority preferable?
Krychek_2 wrote: And why is tyranny of the minority preferable? Because the minority that rules, as representatives of the people, is supposed to be above average in their character and wisdom and maturity. Representatives are supposed to be parent-like, and represent the whole family. If Krychek_2 agrees with any sort of minimum age for voting, then he already agrees with this principle, whether he realizes it or not. If not, then what Krychek_2 is proposing is the equivalent of saying that a household should be run as a democracy, with each of the six kids getting an equal vote alongside… Read more »
The operative phrase being”supposed to be”; I see very little evidence that’s actually the case. Daniel Moynihan once said that he could randomly pick 100 names from the Manhattan phone book that would make just as good a Senate as the one we spend millions of dollars electing, and he was probably right. But even assuming that is the case, I also see very little evidence that there’s any kind of connection between the electoral college and the problem Katecho is claiming it will fix. Bush crashed the economy and got us into nonstop war in the Middle East; it’s… Read more »
Also, parents are not the employees of their children in the way that elected officials are the employees of the voters, so your analogy is badly misplaced in any event.
Are you implying that the same doesn’t work in the opposite direction for the opposite side? Because of course it does., and it always will work that way.
Do you mean he was elected by virtue of the constitution of the United States? Just left out that little tidbit. I think his approval rating is 50%, not 35%, and that is with every major TV media and newspaper outlet trashing him 24-7 for more than a year. It wasn’t Republicans who said the Ossoff race was a referendum on Trump, it was the media, including MSNBC, right up until Ossoff lost last night. So just make sure you speak only the truth and don’t ever say the words “if Hillary Clinton had his scandals.” She had far worse… Read more »
Show me any poll where he has 50%; not even Fox News is making that claim. And yes, he was elected in accordance with the Constitution, but when the Constitution produces results this catastrophic, it’s time to take another look at the Constitution. Not only is he a disaster, but he’s a disaster the people didn’t even vote for. How did her campaign cheat Sanders? The establishment was behind her and did everything it could to undermine him, but that’s the way election campaigns work and it’s hardly a scandal. And no, you shouldn’t *always* believe the media, but neither… Read more »
“when the Constitution produces results this catastrophic, it’s time to take another look at the Constitution. Not only is he a disaster, but he’s a disaster the people didn’t even vote for. ”
I voted for him. The Constitution worked exactly as it was designed. He’s not been a disaster at all. And if this is “catastrophe,” bring it on.
Best disaster of my lifetime!
The battle is not where you think. One one side you have those who consume more than they produce. On the opposing side are those who produce more than they consume. It’s not a political left vs right. It’s an obedience thing…obedience to the dominion mandate.
MeMe and Wisdumb, in five short months he has ceded Southeast Asia to China and gutted NATO, leaving Russia and China to fill the void of us no longer leading the world. The Congressional Budget Office tells us debt is going to soar under his administration. Other countries are no longer sharing intelligence with us because he’s a blabbermouth. He has successfully trashed relationships with our allies that other administrations toos years to build. And that’s only five months in.
If you think those are good things, then maybe we just disagree about what’s a good thing.
Check – Rasmussen shows trump in the high 40’s over the last few samplings (link below). That’s not 50, but it’s a darn sight higher than 35 (your suggestion). That’s about the level that got the Wrecking Ball™ elected. Obama spent a fair chunk of his presidency in the high 40’s as well. Bottom line for me: the country is divided and is only going to get more divided no matter what happens with a Trump presidency or how long it lasts. Trump is anathema to Dems but they would regard virtually any Republican in the same fashion. Romney was… Read more »
You have rejected Jesus in your unrighteousness; why would anyone here agree with what you think is good?
Krychek,
Are you saying the debt will soar? Above Obama’s?
The debt may rise, but at least this time, we may receive some benefit from it.
Yes, he is not the sly politician you have come to trust in; but his talents may be just the thing we need right now.
I’m hoping for the best in all this, and it’s looking pretty good so far.
I’m saying the Congressional Budget office looked at both candidates and concluded that she would be far better for the debt than he would. That’s because he’s not going to cut spending appreciably but will cut taxes, whereas she understands that if we’re going to spend money, someone has to pay for it. In fact, this is a recurring problem with GOP administrations: They cut taxes but not spending so the debt soars. Our first president to dramatically increase the debt was Reagan (not counting World War II, which was a special case). Obama actually reduced the deficit from the… Read more »
Regardless of under which administration it happens, what is the benefit you expect to receive from our debt continuing to rise?
I don’t benefit from the debt rising, which is why I vote Democrat. Fun fact: Two of the last four Democratic presidents left office with balanced budgets. The last time a Republican did that, it was Eisenhower.
K2, I didn’t suppose you did think you benefited from rising debt, I was asking wisdumb. Hard to tell here, who is being addressed, I know.
Krychek_2 wrote: Fun fact: Two of the last four Democratic presidents left office with balanced budgets. Never ever trust secularists or socialists with fun facts. What Krychek_2 neglected to mention is that presidents don’t control spending. Congress does. I’ve linked to this graph before, showing debt in relation to which party was in control of Congress. It’s not a perfect alignment between House and Senate, but notice that the Democrats were in charge of the House during every sharp debt increase on that chart, while Republicans were in charge of Congress for a couple significant debt decreases. Take that for… Read more »
The president can veto budgets and refuse to spend money that’s been appropriated. But more important, he can also raise revenue.
Both parties spend. Democrats raise revenue. Republicans throw it on a credit card.
Krychek_2, I think we should change your name to Barnabas, the more I read your rantings the more it seems that the left will be unable to pull off a chameleon appearance change to make people think that clear and calmer minds are in control and that the far left hasn’t taken over the Democratic Party. Now if we could only get those Bible clinging, gun toting white trash middle Americans to quit coming out to vote!!!!!!!!!
I’m fine with Bible clinging, gun toting, white trash middle Americans voting (though that’s not how I would have characterized them). I just don’t think their votes should count more than the votes of Seattle liberals, but thanks to the electoral college, they do.
“I just don’t think their votes should count more than the votes of Seattle liberals…”
Totally, because when your gay mayor wants to troll for little boys in peace, it’s kind of critical to shut down the crazy trailer trash that just might launch an objection.
He’s not my mayor; I don’t live in Seattle. But at this point his political career is pretty much over and would be no matter where in the country he lived.
But what does that have to do with whether a Seattle resident’s vote should count less than a Wyoming resident’s vote? Why should it take 30 California votes to cancel out one Wyoming vote?
Krychek,
You would be right – er, I mean, correct – if the President was elected by popular vote. But he isn’t. And there are intelligent reasons for it.
So K2 how sbould we count the votes by illegals, the dead, those who votex multiple times or the votes from officials stuffing the ballot box?
Dave, assuming that problem actually exists and isn’t just a Fox News talking point, the electoral college actually makes it worse. Hillary Clinton got 3 million more popular votes than Donald Trump did. However, because of the EC, Donald Trump won because of 80,000 votes scattered across three states. Now, if you wanted to actually steal an election, which would be the more daunting challenge: Stealing 3 million votes, or stealing 80,000 votes? This one’s a no-brainer. If the winner is decided by popular vote, and you want to change the result, you have to alter 3 million votes. If… Read more »
K2, the voter fraud problem has existed for decades. In both Federal and state court, voters in Ohio proved the voting machines used in their elections were tampered with and the vote thrown to the Democratic side. The judges agreed — but would not change the results of the election.
So, the Constitution still helps; however, right now who counts the votes counts more. We can only pray that the Constitution prevails against those who don’t understand the difference between a Christ centered constitutional republic and the mob rule democracy that you and others prefer.
Dave, assuming that to be true, with no electoral college whatever fraudulent votes were cast into Ohio would have been greatly diluted by being added to the national popular vote total. Again, it is much harder to steal 3 million votes than it is to steal 80,000. The electoral college makes vote fraud far easier (and more likely to pay off) than it would be otherwise.
K2, you miss the big picture — the vote is being stolen by millions of illegals who are not authorized to vote, but do vote; by millions of individuals who vote several times instead of just once; by using voting machines that are shown in court to change the vote for a Republican to a Democrat instead.
No, your argument for a democracy instead of our constitutional republic falls short.
Dave, assuming all of that to be true — which I’m far from convinced that it is — how exactly does keeping the electoral college help with that particular problem?
“but what we actually feel is that the intelligence agencies are far more politicized and corrupt than we thought.”
Eh? Who is “we”? Trump’s approval ratings are extremely low, but if “we” means “Doug Wilson and everyone who agrees with him” then it’s hard to see how Trump would ever lose favor without doing something extreme like making abortion mandatory.
I’ll remind people, Pastor Wilson didn’t vote for Trump. His opinion of Trump pre-election was not all that favorable. So tossing Pastor Wilson into the crowd of unconditional pro-Trumpers is not exactly accurate.