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Trump’s tragic flaw – or maybe not — 57 Comments

1. Back when Trump was running, he went on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Fallon was criticized for “normalizing” Trump. So treating Trump as a normal person or Presidential nomination was beyond the pale.

   These “progresives, leftists or whatever they like to call themselves truly hate whoever and whatever stands in their way to power and control.

   As you pointed out with the other people, they were demonized in the most terrible ways, “put yall back in chains,” serial rapist, etc. They don’t care who they hurt and destroy in the process as long as they get the power.

2. “In their minds, it no longer has to be proven that this hateful Trump is the real Trump – it’s a “truth” they now see as self-evident and beyond discussion.”
   _________

   That is true beyond Trump. Once upon a time I enjoyed arguing with liberal friends, some of them quite close friends. (Both my first girlfriend, and my wife were liberals. I converted my wife.)

   But you could argue. The very elements of logical argument are missing now. Today’s variety don’t understand such things as:

   1. You cannot use an authority someone whom your interlocutor does not recognize as such. If you try, you’d better be able to demonstrate why you do, and he should.

   2. You cannot use a contested proposition as one of your premises.

   3. Ad hominem does not mean anything you find offensive. It DOES mean dismissing an argument because of something about your opponent which is not directly relevant. And THAT in turn applies only in cases of “impeaching the witness”, or when he sets himself up as authoritative. (That is what witnesses actually are.) But “You say that because you are a [pick a deplorable group]” does not apply. This is about the oldest rule of logic, except for #2, above.

   4. There is a difference between a fact and the interpretation of that fact. Awareness of this seems entirely extinct today, except among the aged.

   And, to change the subject, I am old enough to remember 1964. It has indeed been the consistent rule that all Republican presidents and candidates for president have been characterized as Hitler. (And I know from reading this goes back further.) The only partial exception was Ford. I think, because of how he got there, he got a partial break. He was only a complete idiot. (Reagan, Bush II, and Trump managed to be both.)

3. Here’s some random comments from FB from people I wouldn’t consider leftists, but more in the “useful idiot” class; ie a lot of the people who voted for Harris/Biden concerning the recent Biden press conference:

   “He is listening to questions without attacking the reporter. He is answering the actual questions and being professional and polite. He is clear and complete.
   I had forgotten what proper discourse looked like. What a relief!”

   “The road to normal.”

   “It makes you realize sanity , and decency haven’t been completely obliterated.”

   “Great to listen to a great man speak. The egotistical, spoiled little boy will be gone Jan 20 and we will no longer have to see or hear him again.”

4. I agree. In politics, there are some people you are never going to win over just by being nice… they want total submission to their plans, values, and ideas and that’s it.

   I’m convinced at this point that the left doesn’t really care about Nazism, racism, fascism, sexism, and all the horrible things they accuse their opponents of. When something distasteful is found among their own ranks, they brush it aside – it’s an aberration, or people are allowed to change (when they’re liberals – conservatives are irredeemable). They don’t really care that Trump is blunt and unfiltered; they don’t care about politeness and civility; if Trump was on the left they’d be all over it.

5. The “cartoon” version of Trump emerged as soon as it looked like he might win the nomination in 2016. Many times we were told that he’d said something outrageous. When I checked the sources, almost always he hadn’t said that.

6. physicsguy:

   Most people don’t think for themselves or notice things on their own, other than what others have already told them. For example, do they even stop for a moment to notice the 180 difference in the press’s questions for Biden vs. Trump? Or the empty nothingness of Biden’s answers? No and no. They hated cartoon Trump, they love empty Biden, and the press is just helping to highlight the difference.

7. “….The elites and leftist extremists created the Trump they wanted to hate and teach their base to hate…..”

   The above is an excellent example of the power of propaganda; well focused, delivered and persistent, it can make folks believe anything at all.
   Anything.
   They convinced half the electorate that Trump was Hitler.

   If Obama had the speaking style and personality traits of Trump, the media would be touting Obama’s direct, in your face speaking style, his “confident” personality shining through in his speeches and interviews, his “refreshing” approach to political discourse, etc.
   They media would be falling all over themselves praising a “new welcome communication paradigm” in the world of politics.

   Americans are no more or less susceptible to propaganda than were 1930s Germans, or Russians during the time of the USSR, Venezuelans, etc.

   Propaganda is effective on any culture irrespective of the standard of living or educational attainment level of a population.

   Presently, the propaganda is focused on telling the citizenry that the elections were fair and square and that there is NO evidence of voter fraud.
   This message will be promulgated until the moment Bidet is sworn in.

8. So very true, and so very sad – they hate the cartoon version, the dishonest but repeated false versions of “what he said”.

   Trump is Hitler.
   Trump is racist.
   Trump is creepy, vulgar, a bully.

   What often happened is that what Trump actually says, that those protesting against the tearing down of statues, contained fine people. He condemned the neo-nazis. But the press claims he says the neo-nazis are fine people.

   Those who WANT to HATE Trump, and Republicans, use this bad news as proof. And repeat it to themselves as “proof”. Thus, Trump is Hitler becomes proven, in their minds.
   [I see in edit, JohnTyler thinks similar thoughts]

   Notice the Trump haters almost never cite actual specific lies, or policies, that are so terrible. Nothing like Obama’s lie “You can keep your doctor”. The haters repeat the insults, and more insults.

   It’s exactly like the Germans who Wanted to Hate the Jews in the ’30s, were told lies about the Jews, and believed the lies. And then Hated the Jews.

   In both cases, with constant demonization, and looking at everything done or said as proof. Trump wants X because he’s like Hitler. Whatever X is, Trump wants it because he’s like Hitler – and this is even more proof he IS like Hitler.

   For 5 years.

   But it was never just Trump. It’s actually all Republicans: Kavanaugh, Romney, Palin, Bush. Not Bush Derangement Syndrome, nor Trump DS, but actually Democrat Derangement Syndrome.

   And we’re going to see it on more full display than ever.

9. I agree too. Trump is a whole. Remove any trait, and he isn’t successful at all. My concern has always been his supporters. I was for Ted Cruz in the 2016 primary and I loathed the Trump supporters. But when Trump won, I agree that Cruz bollixed his convention speech. Trump eventually talked to Cruz and brought him back as strong supporter. Yet Trump’s fans continued to call anyone that didn’t praise everything Trump did as cucks. I get the joke in reference to Bill Kristol, but there’s a long distance between Cruz and Kristol, and Trump gets it. Unfortunately, this failure to understand the difference is driving the Georgia runoff boycott.

   I get it. I hated giving a vote to John Cornyn. I did so, because I knew Trump needed the Senate. Without the Senate, Trump would have been impeached and the SCOTUS would have another John Roberts type. The time to beat Cornyn was in the primaries, and that didn’t happen. The same is now true in Georgia. Get out their and vote. Find a replacement as soon as they are in, and build them up for the 2022 primary, because we will need them.

10. Why is Trump’s pettiness and gross exaggeration essential to his willingness to fight, energy and sharp criticisms? There is enough to criticize in the left e.g. “the Democratic Party’s identity politics is profoundly racist and a direct decedent of Jim Crow” without engaging in exaggeration and enough profoundly important one never need be petty.

11. neo: FYI: My browser shows this URL for this topic:

    https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/12/05/__trashed-53/

    Looks wrong. Might be a problem.

12. Several months ago, during the first round of Covid, I met a young fellow while we were ordering pizza for takeout. (I’m not getting pizza all the time — it’s just one of the few opportunities I interact with strangers and the world these days to provide material for these sparkling anecdotes.)

    He started asking me about the election, then switched to telling me what a terrible person Trump was and hoping he would be defeated. I was non-committal, saying, well, there are other ways to see it. But he just barreled on.

    It seemed he wanted to do a Two-Minute Hate with me. Happily my pizza slice arrived and I was out of there.

    I bring him up because he struck me as a blue collar, white guy and at first I thought he would be pro-Trump. I was sure he wasn’t being spoon-fed SJW/BLM dogma on campus. I don’t know what to make of him now, but I’m sure there are more of him.

13. Yes, the Left has created a cartoon Trump hate-object. That said, our side desperately needs someone who has the eloquence and command of language that the times require. Someone like Laurence Fox in the UK. Here’s Fox on the Reclaim Party’s platform:

    https://www.instagram.com/tv/CIaPOqKAlaY/

    Fox closes with a quote from Ronald Reagan. We need a Laurence Fox in this country.

14. “…the left attacks all Republicans and/or conservatives and wants to destroy them.”

    The left is animated by a small cluster of hatreds: hatred of America and the West, hatred of white people, hatred of men and boys, hatred of orthodox Christianity and Judaism, hatred of capitalism, and hatred of Republicans and conservatives. There may be others, but these are the main ones.

    Whenever I see someone on the left do or say anything, I am usually able to trace it back to one of these basic hatreds.

15. Hubert:

    The Brits tend to have an eloquent flair that Americans lack these days.

16. huxley:

    Thanks. I fixed the URL. That was strange – I have no idea why it had that other URL.

    As far as the young man in the pizza place goes, I think the operative word might be “young.”

17. Bill M:

    One can certainly imagine a person with just the right combination of traits: a fighter who is eloquent and elevated, a tough person who nevertheless doesn’t trash his enemies but bests them in some other more dignified manner. Such a combination is rare, especially in politics, which does not tend to attract the best. In actuality, though, tough people tend to have rough edges, and the two sets of characteristics often go together.

    Cruz was the closest to that combination of fighter and eloquence that I recall seeing during the 2016 race. Reagan had it, I think. But I’m not at all sure that Cruz would have won, since he also has some sort of charisma deficit, and Reagans are very rare indeed. I also wonder how Reagan would do in the current climate. Forty years ago he did get a lot of flak, but the atmosphere was nowhere near as toxic.

18. Trump is a godsend. His blunt sharpness, his insults and exaggerations have done more to expose the left’s fanaticism than could any other approach. Those who despise him, reveal their shallowness and acceptance of the left’s “kool-aid”.

19. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed something about people that I didn’t understand when I was younger: some of their negative and positive traits are inextricably linked.”

    A sociology professor I knew in college was fond of the phrase: ‘Tell me your strengths and I’ll tell you your weaknesses.’

20. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed something about people that I didn’t understand when I was younger: some of their negative and positive traits are inextricably linked.

    neo, David Foster: Indeed.

    Once I realized Trump wasn’t going to blow up the world or utterly disgrace the Republican Party, I stopped worrying about his tweets, etc.

    I don’t know how Trump’s mojo works but he’s got something working, so I say, “Don’t mess with it.”
    __________________________________________________

    Lady: I wish someone could tell me what “Diddy-wah-diddy” means.
    Mr. Natural: If you don’t know by now, lady, don’t mess with it!

    –R. Crumb, “Zap Comix”
    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/34/d6/1f/34d61fc285c92f3f6c7b83556d5b4e0f.jpg

21. Everyone here knows the story of Lincoln’s success in selecting Grant as his Commander-in-Chief in spite of Grant’s drinking. Peter Drucker, the sixties business guru, tells that story, then adds the story of Robert E. Lee’s generals:
    _____________________________________________________

    Before [Lincoln] chose Grant, he had appointed in succession three or four Generals whose main qualifications were their lack of major weaknesses. As a result, the North, despite its tremendous superiority in men and materiel, had not made any headway for three long years from 1861 to 1864.

    In sharp contrast, Lee, in command of the Confederate forces, had staffed from strength. Every one of Lee’s generals, from Stonewall Jackson on, was a man of obvious and monumental weaknesses. But these failings Lee considered—rightly—to be irrelevant. Each of them had, however, one area of real strength—and it was this strength, and only this strength, that Lee utilized and made effective. As a result, the “well-rounded” men Lincoln had appointed were beaten time and again by Lee’s “single-purpose tools,” the men of narrow but very great strength.

    https://druckerinside.org/en/menu/post-making-strength-productive-en/
    _____________________________________________________

    According to Drucker one can devote one’s time and energy to eliminating weaknesses and only end up a mediocre executive. For true effectiveness Drucker recommends building on one’s strengths and the strengths of others.

22. It is simply diabolical on one level, and mindless on another.

    There are many disconnects. I think of two. First, Trump is attacked mercilessly, as was G.W. Bush and the others cited by Eeyore, but if he lashes back he is incessantly called a bully, and worse in the media. Second, many of the people who hate Trump for his personal faults either overlooked, or excused, Clinton. How can you even compare the two?

    Of course these shed a light on a third dynamic, and that is the inability of many people to differentiate between personality and policies/results when evaluating a President. The Never Trumpers contain some of those unsophisticated souls. Other Never Trumnpers simply hide behind his personality to disguise that they hate his policies.

    I frequently cite my daughter in responses on this forum. Again, she is a Poo Bah in the LA County health hierarchy–in a hospital, not in County government. We were discussing the amazingly fast rollout of vaccines, and I cited “warp speed”. She said that Pfizer was not part of warp speed. That is disputable, but nevertheless. She went on to say that all Trump did was buy up the vaccines before they were approved. So, in the mind of this individual this bold and innovative move to fund production to multiple research labs in advance, so that once approved vaccines would be ready for distribution at “warp speed” is trivialized. Sadly typical.

    I don’t know how many votes he lost because of personality traits. I am certain that he earned enough votes to win this election.

23. Oldflyer:

    I wonder what your daughter would answer if you asked her what her opinion would be if Obama or Biden had expedited the vaccine in the same way.

24. Slightly startling to look in here and see myself quoted. Just a quick clarification or addendum: Neo, you say it’s not reasonable to expect that the good qualities can be separated from the bad in a person like Trump. I more or less agree, and that’s precisely what makes the whole thing *tragic*, as opposed to just sad or frustrating or whatever.

    I think I’m a little different from most people here in that I think Trump’s belligerence, insults, and so forth are not just, so to speak, a cosmetic defect. I think they really hurt him and his agenda and his re-election. I think he could have won over enough swing voters to win this election decisively if he had been able or willing to change his…what did I call it?…petty belligerence. Even though the media campaigning against him put him in the position of a running back with 10lb weights on his feet.

25. Further note: But I think what really turned the election–setting aside all the controversies about cheating–was covid. The fact that it happened, that it was out of his control, and that the press and many other voices blamed him, and that many Democrats actually wanted and attempted to increase the country’s fear and pain, were probably the decisive factors. Even with the reservation I expressed in my last comment, I think he still probably would have won (out of cheating range) if not for the pandemic.

26. Trump won in a landslide. The democrats manufactured just enough fraudulent votes in swing states to hand the election to Biden. No matter how many votes Trump got, they were going to exceed it, had Trump gotten 95% of the actual votes, they’d have made up enough to ‘win’.

    Nor would it have mattered had Trump been a paragon of diplomacy over these past 4 years. In fact, had he been ‘reasonably accomodating’, they’d have played him for a fool, just as they did George W. Bush.

    It’s his policies and his obstruction of the furtherance of their agenda that the leadership hates. All the rest is just propaganda for the rubes and true believers.

27. The democrats manufactured just enough fraudulent votes in swing states to hand the election to Biden.

    Geoffrey Britain: According to Michael Barone:
    ________________________________________________

    Joe Biden’s margin of victory in this year’s three crucial states (Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin) was an even smaller 43,809 [than Trump’s 2016 victory with 77,736 votes].

    https://nypost.com/2020/12/04/democrats-reaping-the-whirlwind-of-their-2016-election-resistance/
    ________________________________________________

    Yet another anomalous curiosity in the curiously anomalous 2020 election.

28. Geoffrey Britian nails it on all counts. The left hates any and all resistance to their agenda no matter what form it takes.
    As for propaganda and the useful idiots, they are falling for the lure of scapegoating, a primitive and emotional response, which is, according to Rene Girard, the ancient source of human conflict and violence.
    So much for their supposed moral and intellectual superiority.

29. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed something about people that I didn’t understand when I was younger: some of their negative and positive traits are inextricably linked.

    +10

30. John Tyler wrote, “Americans are no more or less susceptible to propaganda than were 1930s Germans, or Russians during the time of the USSR, Venezuelans, etc. Propaganda is effective on any culture irrespective of the standard of living or educational attainment level of a population.”

    Especially when high quantity and quality propaganda is applied to people who are highly stressed and isolated.

    Tom Grey wrote, “It’s exactly like the Germans who Wanted to Hate the Jews in the ’30s, were told lies about the Jews, and believed the lies. And then Hated the Jews.”

    Creating a target (“cartoon Trump”) and a milieu that predisposes people to an emotional, not an analytical response is a key.

    For example:

    huxley wrote, “He started asking me about the election, then switched to telling me what a terrible person Trump was and hoping he would be defeated. I was non-committal, saying, well, there are other ways to see it. But he just barreled on. It seemed he wanted to do a Two-Minute Hate with me….”

    huxley continued, “I bring him up because he struck me as a blue collar, white guy and at first I thought he would be pro-Trump. I was sure he wasn’t being spoon-fed SJW/BLM dogma on campus. I don’t know what to make of him now, but I’m sure there are more of him.”

    A possible explanation is, “propaganda is effective,” and the propagandists are really good.

    Or, as Oldflyer wrote, “It is simply diabolical on one level, and mindless on another.”

    What to do? Simi’s version of Aimasiko:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDIqkEWLYzE
    And, Ebenezer Obey’s original:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM5JQjSW3sU

31. Just puzzling over Ohio. Trump apparently flipped it to Republican in 2016 from 2012 Obama Democrat.

    Trump took it in 2016: 2,841,000 to Hillary’s 2,394,000.

    In 2020, the Dems increased their total numbers by over 280k to 2,679.000, whereas Trump’s total went up to 3,154,000. [Round numbers].

    Clearly more Dems were motivared to vote, but what shocks me is the additional votes Trump was able to garner to maintain and even increase his winning margin percentage-wise: 51.69 in 2016, to 53.3 in 2020. Even if every Gary Johnson vote from 2016 went to Trump, it still would not account for it.

    Two white males, one a so-called mainstream Democrat, and Trump still increases his margin of victory over the Dems in Ohio.

    Whatever the reason for the Biden poll numbers in other states, I think that this result highlights the economic culture chasm theory – more than a theory for some years now – between the strongly Democrat states, and states that sometimes go Republican.

    District of Columbia: 92% for Biden.

    The government’s client class, employed or unemployed, votes Democrat. It provides their daily bread. They are already socialist, or feudal, depending on how you look at it.

    Sources: Wiki, “2016 election in Ohio” and 2020 Cookpoliticalreport.com

32. Michigan shows, using the same sources, an astonishing half a million plus increase in Democrat voter turnout (535,000) over the 2016 election.

    Trump, increased his vote total by by 371,000 prox, better in raw numbers than his formidible increase this time in Ohio, a more populous state.

    That roughly 160k differential between the 2016 and 2020 Democrat and Republican increases in Michigan is what ostensibly put Michigan in Biden’s column.

    When Biden said he had an unprecedented vote fraud operation in play, be it just good old fashioned you-just-gotta-accept-it felonious Democrat ballot harvesting, or other more sophisticated methods, he was obviously not kidding.

33. Neo,

    “The Brits tend to have an eloquent flair that Americans lack these days.”

    They’ve always had it, as the photo of the biography of Winston Churchill on your blog’s masthead reminds us. Churchill knew how to use the language to inspire his countrymen in dark times. Here’s Peter O’Toole on the effect of Churchill’s oratory in 1940:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrmR8guKdgU

    “Came the hour, came the man.”

    I’m not bothered by Trump’s abrasiveness or demotic speaking style. He has gotten off some punchy lines. One of his best was near the end of the second debate, when he looked straight at Biden, summed up Biden’s useless career in Washington, and said “I ran because of you”. The two-second beat of silence that followed that simple statement said it all.

    But we need more than one-liners. We need someone who can switch between Queens–and Lincoln, or at least JFK. Even Eisenhower. Trump doesn’t have it, but he’s not alone. I can’t think of a single contemporary American politician who does. Sad.

34. I wonder how well JFK’s wit would have held up under the unfair, wildly hostile treatment the press has given Trump?

    JFK could be marvelous in those days, but the press adored him and treated him that way.

35. Mac says:
    I think he could have won over enough swing voters to win this election decisively if he had been able or willing to change his…what did I call it?…petty belligerence. Even though the media campaigning against him put him in the position of a running back with 10lb weights on his feet.

    This is almost certainly false, as DNW shows in numbers [Thx DNW]. Trump DID win over swing votes. 10 mln more. The Deep State cheaters cheated just enough, AND as much as they needed to win the state, in the Fraud cities of Philly, Pittsburgh (PA), Atlanta (GA), Detroit (MI), Milwaukee (WI), Las Vegas (NV), and Phoenix (AZ).

    If the Dems are willing to cheat enough to win, and they’re not caught and stopped, then they win. So far GOPe Reps (like Kemp in GA? or at least SoS Raffensperger) have not quite been willing to stop them. Even tho Trump campaign has “caught” them.
    (Trump complains that FBI is MIA)

    And here, there might be some truth in Mac – had Trump been less belligerent, it is possible that fewer GOPe would be so strongly against him. But if he was enough less pushy for the GOPe to accept him, he wouldn’t be genuinely seen as strong enough for many of his supporters.

    Neo’s post is so spot on: “His good traits – his ability to fight, his nose for hypocrisy, his incredible energy, his biting humor – are linked, I believe, to the traits people don’t like: sharpness, insults, exaggeration, and whatever else they profess to dislike.”

    For me, actual policy, and actual results, are even more important than any of his personal characteristics, good OR bad.

    Dem deep state stole the election – with many GOPe watchers.

36. Tom Grey:

    I think that at least part of the passivity of the GOPe is that they think the left is something like them: playing the political game, not quite meaning what they say, everybody basically wanting the status quo to continue. I think they are ignorant of the true nature of the left (which is what the Democratic Party has become, as opposed to liberal), including its deep duplicity and ruthlessness, and its revolutionary intent.

    I don’t think Trump was 100% aware of the leftist nature of the Democrats when he first took office, but he became very aware really really quickly. That’s part of why he fight so hard. Sure, he’s a narcissist (as are most politicians). But he knows what kind of fight we’re in, and that helps give him his sharp edge. The GOPe can’t stand that and also doesn’t understand it.

    One of the things that happened during the Kavanaugh hearing was the moment when Lindsay Graham – previously a gold star member of the GOPe – suddenly “got it.” He spoke out with great bitterness and alarm. Since then, he’s retrenched a little, but has not to this point (yet, anyway) gone back to the GOPe in the way he was before. Someone like Romney, on the other hand, has become more and more entrenched in the GOPe. One of his flaws in 2012 was his failure to understand the nature of the fight, and since then he’s gotten worse rather than better – IMHO because of a combination of naivete and personal animus towards Trump because of things Trump did to humiliate him.

    I think, by the way, that humiliating Romney was a mistake on Trump’s part. It was unnecessary, and I think it backfired on him.

37. Regarding Romney; the smaller the man the bigger the grudge that he will carry.

38. Huxley,

    I can’t imagine JFK being given the Trump Treatment by the media, then or even now. He was handsome, cool, witty, well-spoken, not an outsider, and a Democrat. He could unleash his Irish in private, as in this taped telephone “conversation”–actually, an epic dressing-down–from July 1963:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtLTmg2vCzY

    Sounds almost like Trump, but with a Boston accent. Also, Trump (to my knowledge) has a reputation for being decent to his subordinates.

    The press treated Eisenhower with thinly veiled contempt (Republican), but nothing like what Trump has had to put up with. Of course it was a different country back then.

39. Humbert:

    IMHO political eloquence is very very rare. I am also somewhat immune to it. I don’t like political speeches in general. The two exceptions are Churchill and Lincoln. That’s a high bar, and I don’t think that kind of eloquence comes along more than once in fifty or even 100 years, if that, although I do think it used to be far more common even in the US than it is now, and that it is more common in the UK even now.

    I also think that the culture is so debased that the audiences aren’t very receptive to eloquence. If someone got up to the podium and spoke like Churchill or Lincoln today, would people think that person weird? What would be the modern equivalence of eloquence like that? I don’t know, but I know we don’t hear it today.

    So I don’t expect it from Trump and I don’t lament its lack in him. I like his humor and his colloquial style, which feels more sincere to me than the empty phony platitudinous cliches we hear from most politicians today.

    Now when I listen to some of Reagan’s old speeches, I hear some eloquence, although nothing like the caliber of Churchill’s (who was unique and Shakespearean, in my opinion). But during Reagan’s time I remember thinking his speeches were corny and that he delivered them as an actor, which made me distrust him (of course, I was a Democrat at the time and that probably made me less able to trust him, because I now see him as having been sincere). I also remember hearing people say that Clinton was a good speechmaker, but although I was a Democrat and voted for him twice, I was always bored almost to tears by his tedious speeches and had no idea what people were talking about when they praised his skills. Obama had that nice voice, but everything he said was either a lie or poisonous or both, as far as I was concerned.

    Biden is one of the worst public speakers I’ve ever heard, at least on the national level. Even when he’s not incoherent he is either mouthing cliches, platitudes, or incorrect figures/facts; or lying; or making a promise to do some awful thing or denying that he previously promised to do some awful thing; or bashing Trump (usually based on a lie about something Trump did). His affect is “off,” his voice is somewhat robotic (you can almost see him thinking “now I need to shout for emphasis”) and unnatural in its cadences and rhythms and emphases. I have seen some of his old speeches, and although they are bad too, they are nothing like what he’s doing now, which is far worse.

40. OT:

    https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/12/pennsylvania-alito-moves-up-response-date-on-emergency-application-to-12-8/

    “Pennsylvania: Alito Moves Up Response Date on Emergency Application To 12/8
    Comments Permalink Posted by William A. Jacobson Sunday, December 6, 2020 at 12:35pm

    So what is this about? More mind-reading: It takes the “safe harbor” issue off the table if that were an impediment to SCOTUS issuing a substative ruling.”

41. Neo,

    Political eloquence is indeed rare. Still, we could use some now. I’d settle for a dry, factual, plain-spoken statement of the issues at stake and a practical course of action. Like Truman. Or Nixon, whose skill at conveying essential information in a grown-up way was underrated.

    I should have mentioned Reagan, supposedly the modern gold standard for presidential political eloquence. I had the same reaction to him you did: I thought he was hokey. IMO, he was a better orator when he was in the political and professional wilderness (like Churchill in the 1930s), culminating in his 1964 “A Time for Choosing” speech in support of Barry Goldwater. Less polished, not at all affable, but a lot more forceful.

    Churchill was half-American. I would like to think that it contributed to his fighting spirit.

    Lincoln is said to have been a poor-to-middling public speaker, at least as far as delivery was concerned.

    Agree about the debasement of public culture. And speechwriters. We used to have guys like Ted Sorensen. Now we have snarky punks like Ben Rhodes and Jon Favreau.

    Finally, I should have been clearer in my comment about Trump’s reputation for treating subordinates decently. I meant people far down the totem pole who don’t have power. Trump can be a bully to people in authority if he thinks they’re not doing their jobs. His AGs come to mind. This is a flaw, since it makes him look petulant and weak. JFK (to take just one example) would have known better than to engage in public name-calling against members of his own administration. Those who criticize Trump in this regard have a compelling point. But, Trump is Trump.

42. Hubert, neo:

    John McWhorter, the black, centrist linguist, wrote a book I often recommend, “Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Modern Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care.” (Love the subtitle.) McWhorter states outright:
    ________________________________________________

    There is indeed something that we are losing in America in terms of the English language. Namely, a particular kind of artful use of English, formerly taken for granted as crucial to legitimate expression on the civic stage, has virtually disappeared.
    ________________________________________________

    McWhorter sees this as across the board, not just political speech. He doesn’t want to lecture anyone to pull up their socks in everyday talk, but he considers the loss of formal speech — including in poetry and song lyrics — to be a genuine loss.

43. I’m a hick from the Colorado mountains. Have been in New York many times and taken cab rides from the airports into the city. Trump reminds me of a New York cabbie in the way he talks – opinionated, vulgar, funny, and pushy. It’s a type of personality that I connect with New Yorkers. I don’t criticize because I have my own regional idiosyncrasies that are less than urbane and gentlemanly. Not the ideal type to lead a great nation, but most of us here have been able to look beyond the personality and see a man with courage, affection for this country and the common citizens, and some reasonable ideas for getting us disengaged from globalism and being the world’s policeman. He has worked tirelessly to accomplish his goals in the face of continuous resistance from the elite establishment and their minions. That he refuses to back down in the face of such blistering attacks and gives as good as he gets, is a wonder to behold.

    Would that we could find a conservative to lead us with Lady Thatcher’s or Sir Winston’s gift for language, but until we do, I’m willing to follow Trump, warts and all.

44. J.J.:

    We’re on the same page. I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 because he fights. I don’t care that much about his rough edges. I care a great deal about his effectiveness, and want to see him prevail. One of his weapons in this battle–war, really–is rhetoric. The more effectively and concisely he can put his case to the American people (and the military–they’re a crucial background audience in this), the better his and our chances will be.

    Huxley:

    Thanks for the McWhorter quote. I agree with him about the decline in “the artful use of English” in all aspects of life. There is a strong connection between great poetry and great oratory (and yes, great song lyrics). I would argue that we have not had any great poetry, or great poets, in this country since the 1970s, when Richard Wilbur, Robert Lowell, and other members of that generation were still writing. I’m not sure we would know what to do with great poetry if it were suddenly to reappear in our culture. I’m afraid that the mental muscles and cultural context we would need to appreciate it have atrophied from disuse.

    By the way, if you haven’t watched McWhorter’s conversations with Glenn Loury on Bloggingheads TV, check them out. You’re in for a treat. They’re two of the best public intellectuals we’ve got, and they don’t pull any punches. Search for “the Glenn Show”.

45. Hello. I think it’s a great insight, really one of the signal insights for me as far as evaluating a man like Donald Trump is concerned – this idea of certain necessary and productive personality traits being linked to certain others. It has the ring of truth to me. It could certainly explain some things about my own life.

    While I don’t believe there’s any particular one-to-one correspondence between positive/productive/necessary trait A to negative/detrimental trait Z, still I think it would be fascinating to undertake a study of the character traits on both sides of the ledger for any number of “impactful” (how I hate that neologism – and yet, somehow, it is not without its uses) personalities. Alexander, MacArthur, FDR, Washington, Trump, Patton, Guderian… a huge list of candidates… I would add Napoleon and some others, but one should maybe concentrate on the success stories; as in Napoleon’s case, for instance, we can all probably agree that in the long term, he was a bit of a failure, his positive traits having been in some sense overcome by his weaknesses. (I hope I don’t presume overmuch in this.)

    Interesting to note the predominance of military types in my list. I think it’s because success and failure in that realm are much more clear-cut than in statesmanship or even business. As to business, okay: Rockefeller, Jobs, Henry Ford, Buffett, etc. etc. – there are plenty of examples on offer. Heck, even the big boss of the plant at which I work could be a decent case study.

    I decided to comment on this thread because there were so many good comments above. Leland, huxley, shadow, Eeyore: thanks.

46. I agree the traits are linked and the characteristics that gave Trump his edge, finally calling out the bureaucratic swamp, but sometimes calling out allies (or at least needed frenemies).

    We are very much in the age of telegenic politics (which is why someone like Cruz, or Pence can’t win).

    If there was one thing that did President Trump in was the Woodward interview. The President is sharp enough to know (or should have known) that being candid with a leftist, thinking he could finesse someone like Woodward has a huge mistake.

    “I don’t think Trump was 100% aware of the leftist nature of the Democrats when he first took office, but he became very aware really really quickly.”-Neo

    I would change that to include GOPe characters. Trump needed advice assembling an administration and too many never Trumpers were suggested. Given the preponderance of Obama holdovers, the GOPe just made matters worse.

    There is an additional element to the fake media– and it’s constant drumbeat of misinformation. There is a full on psy-op war of disinformation from the usual suspects. But it’s discouraging to think the US deep state is also involved in the campaign.

    For four years every Trump attempt to withdraw American forces from anywhere– from Afghanistan, Syria or even Germany was rebuffed– rebuffed by the military, by corporatists, by globalists– by everyone that benefitted from the status quo.

    That’s why I think it hardly mattered whether Trump was nice or not– it was his fundamental policy of America first. National sovereignty is anathema to the globalists who spent hundreds of millions attempting to elect Biden, by hook or crook (but mostly by crook it appears).

47. The fact that people are citing Trumps style convinces me Americans are not serious about this country. Every critique is about style rather than substantive policy. Style is important to a degree, but, if a person elevates style over substance there is a serious problem.

48. I would argue that we have not had any great poetry, or great poets, in this country since the 1970s, when Richard Wilbur, Robert Lowell, and other members of that generation were still writing. I’m not sure we would know what to do with great poetry if it were suddenly to reappear in our culture. I’m afraid that the mental muscles and cultural context we would need to appreciate it have atrophied from disuse.

    Hubert: Boy, I haven’t thought about Richard Wilbur in a while! As it happened, the other night I got the urge to pull down a poetry anthology and turned to the Robert Lowell section. He still doesn’t do much for me, but I can sense the craft and intelligence behind his work.

    I’ll admit my youthful interests were in experimental/colloquial poetry. My life would be the poorer without William Carlos Williams and Frank O’Hara, among many others.

    Still, I liked it better when there were some poets shooting for a high oratorical voice. I think it kept the experimental/colloquial wing somewhat more honest. Now the E/C wing has won out and IMO American poetry has, with a few exceptions, collapsed.

    Back in the 80s I started wondering if the new stuff was all that good and I was assured that time would sort the wheat from the chaff, but that does not seem to have happened. I can’t think of any poet who emerged in the 80s who is likely to be loved and remembered.

    I don’t expect this to change. American poetry has become an SJW/postmodern community with standards to match. If a T.S. Eliot or even a Dylan Thomas appeared today and spoke with a voice like thunder, I don’t believe he would be heard.

49. That’s why I think it hardly mattered whether Trump was nice or not– it was his fundamental policy of America first.

    Brian E: Agreed.

    Trump could have put on a Santa suit and laughed ho-ho-ho, but he was a threat to the power and money of the Swamp/Davos crew. They still would have attacked him all-out until he was done.

50. “A great many people I know see that cartoon version as reality. In their minds, it no longer has to be proven that this hateful Trump is the real Trump – it’s a “truth” they now see as self-evident and beyond discussion.”

    Liberals don’t think. Thinking interferes with the emotions which fuel them. I know that may seem unnecessarily provocative, but decades and decades of evidence supports my statement. If anyone knows of a liberal who actually demonstrates serious thinking when it comes to politics and policy, please name him or her. Genuine interest. I have very close college friends who are lawyers and Democrats including those who have run for Congress as Dems. They haven’t attempted honest thought re: politics in forty years. I wish I was kidding. It’s amazing how their personal opinions ALWAYS align with whatever the current leftist narrative is. When the narrative changes, they change. Loyal to a fault, they could easily be like American Stalinists during the multiple whiplash of the mid-30s through 1941.

    An example — a very well-educated lawyer (top undergrad and top law school) and I used to have regular email correspondence. Usually about sports, but he made a lefty remark once and that led to a lot of political back and forth. This was during the second Clinton term and the scandals had piled up over the roof. He categorically rejected any of the evidence of scandal on the grounds that every witness thereto was biased against Bill and Hillary. Since they alleged scandalous behavior, they were untrustworthy witnesses. I laughed at him and pointed out how ridiculous that position was, especially for a lawyer. But he was adamant. His extreme position made it clear to me that there simply wasn’t going to be any thinking if he had any say in the matter.

    Later on, we were discussing some policy issue when he used the phrase “corporate interests”. Despite the fact that all the clients of the large firm where he worked were corporations, he took it as a given that all businesses and all corporations were dishonest and corrupt. E.g. if a scientist took a dollar in funding which could ever be traced back to business, all of his work was forever tainted and false. I asked him if that meant all his legal work (paid for by corporations) was corrupt and he never emailed again.

    Anyone paying attention can see that the Left has only gotten more irrational and insane since that time in the late 90s. They don’t think. They really don’t.

51. stan:

    I think perhaps what you mean is that liberals don’t apply strictly rational thinking when it comes to politics.

    Neither do some conservatives, I might add.

    The liberals I know – and I know many – fall into several categories. The first are the ones who really are not interested in politics, don’t like discussing it and have a very short attention span for it, and are liberals because they think liberals are nice and conservatives are mean. This group usually doesn’t have the patience or interest to listen to facts for more than a few seconds, and therefore they are neither rational nor irrational about politics – they are arational.

    The second group is emotional in general. They lead with their emotions, and they are emotional about politics as well.

    The third group is very rational and fact-based in every aspect (or nearly every aspect) of their lives except politics. That is the sort of person you described in your comment, I think. I know many such people.

    I suppose there’s a fourth group, but they’re not liberals – they are leftists. They are hyper-rational about a lot of things and often quite well-informed about current events, but don’t believe in truth or in telling the truth. They believe in power and they aim to have it, and the ends justify the means.

52. Neo,

    Okay. I’ll give you another example. Friend who is a lawyer and also ran for Congress. Publishes political op-eds in mainstream papers and is a political commentator in his state on tv and radio. A few years back, he wrote an opinion piece ripping GOP for being racist with voter ID.

    The Obama DOJ brought suit in his state against voter ID. The Democrat argument in that suit was to put on a college professor as an expert witness to testify that blacks “lack sufficient sophistication” to secure a voter ID. That is, blacks are too stupid. And since blacks are too stupid, requiring them to have a photo ID is racist. My friend says he is fully in accord with this position. Yet, if I told him that his belief about the stupidity of blacks actually made HIM the racist, he wouldn’t accept it. Logic be damned. Further, try to explain that the remedy that Democrats insist on is idiotic. Removing voter ID facilitates fraud. It would actually be really, really easy to insure that every black (or other person) has a picture ID. They do it all over the world! The remedy is ridiculous as a matter of logic. Unfortunately, since he only accepts the narrative — “does not compute.”

    When Obama was requiring girls to shower with boys, I asked him what he would tell a concerned dad whose daughter was upset about it and worried for her safety. He said, “I’d be happy to explain to him why he is a bigot.”

53. Stan and Neo:

    I occasionally correspond about politics with my liberal-to-left-wing relatives in Massachusetts. They are impervious to evidence. And since they are well-credentialed (e.g. HBS and Duke University Law School), they are very good at coming up with clever arguments for dismissing awkward facts.

    Huxley:

    I like the early Robert Lowell, from “Lord Weary’s Castle” through “For the Union Dead”. The stuff after that, not so much. Wilbur is a favorite from that generation, as are Jarrell, Berryman, Bishop, Bowers, Hecht, Snodgrass, and (in the UK) Larkin and Amis. And of course Frost, whose quip about free verse–“like playing tennis without a net”–sums up my view as well. Although it can be done well, it usually isn’t. For an example of it being done well, check out Edgar Bowers’ “Mary”, appended here to an appreciation by contemporary poet Timothy Steele:

    https://bit.ly/2IsFWGX

    Steele, Dana Gioia, Michael Astrue aka “A. M. Juster” (former Social Security Administration commissioner under Bush and Obama!), and Wendy Cope in the UK are contemporary poets who still write in rhyme and meter. Cope’s Strugnell poems (about a fictional third-rate male poet) are very funny.

    Being an oldish guy (early 60s), I was fortunate enough to see Wilbur, Stephen Spender, Seamus Heaney, and Anthony Hecht read in person on several occasions. And I ran into Dana Gioia at an airport in Connecticut. He was on his way back to California from a poetry contest.

    “IMO American poetry has, with a few exceptions, collapsed.” Sadly, I have to agree with you on that. And even if it hadn’t, it needs an audience. That audience is no longer there, and our public life is the poorer for it.

54. Hubert:

    So you’ve met Dana Gioa! I found his 90s essay, “Can Poetry Matter?”, riveting. It asked and pondered the questions of poetry’s position in society, which had been bothering me for years, once I noticed that the only people who read contemporary poetry are other poets.
    ______________________________________________________

    American poetry now belongs to a subculture. No longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life, it has become the specialized occupation of a relatively small and isolated group. Little of the frenetic activity it generates ever reaches outside that closed group. As a class poets are not without cultural status. Like priests in a town of agnostics, they still command a certain residual prestige. But as individual artists they are almost invisible.

    http://danagioia.com/essays/american-poetry/can-poetry-matter/
    ______________________________________________________

    It’s thirty years later and not much has changed, aside from poets becoming even more stridently and homogeneously left-wing.

    Gioia used the prominence he achieved from the essay to quit his job and write full-time (more power to him). He seems to have moderated his criticism after he became part of the system (Chairman of the NEA for instance).

55. Huxley:

    Sorry, as usual, for the late response. Day job duties.

    Yup, I encountered Dana Gioia near the McDonald’s in the concourse at Bradley Airport (Hartford/Springfield). It was a while ago–maybe 8-9 years. I think he was surprised to be recognized. We chatted and he asked for my business card.

    We corresponded for a bit after that. Very nice guy. One of the questions he puzzled over was San Francisco’s decline as a literary center: from Frank Norris, Jack London, and Ambrose Bierce in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, through North Beach and the Beats, Weldon Kees, Robert Duncan, and the San Francisco Renaissance in the 1940s-1950s, to Thom Gunn, the aforementioned Edgar Bowers, and Evan Connell in the 1960s, to next to nothing by 2000. For my part, I mentioned the city’s declining importance in American popular culture: from being featured in movies and TV series from the 1940s through the 1970s to a much lower profile today. Perhaps the Counterculture and the 1960s were simultaneously San Francisco’s high point in terms of visibility and the start of its decline. Anyway, you can find Gioia’s essay on San Francisco’s literary history at:

    http://danagioia.com/essays/literature-in-california/fallen-western-star-the-decline-of-san-francisco-as-a-literary-region/

    He makes some great points about the fragility of regional cultures in the age of globalization and media consolidation. His transition from the corporate world (General Foods, IIRC), to full-time writing, to the cultural establishment (NEA, then USC, then CA Poet Laureate) is rather unusual, in that most poets today come of out MFA programs and academe. Which probably explains the less-than-memorable quality of most contemporary poetry.

56. One of the questions he puzzled over was San Francisco’s decline as a literary center

    Hubert:

    Well, I moved to San Francisco in 1982 and it was straight downhill from there!

    More seriously, the Beat and Hippie movements ran out of juice, then rents went sky-high, the Old Guard was dying off, and the colorful, artistic types had to move unless they had nailed down a good day job or gone high-tech.

    Gioia makes an additional argument that literary criticism died out in San Francisco and devolved into boosterism. He is correct that San Francsico has become more of a museum to past glories than an ongoing enterprise.

    Gioia is an interesting character. He is one of the few people in what Bill Knott called the “po-biz,” who can think outside the box. He has struggled manfully to grow the poetry audience. If he has succeeded, I can’t tell. I stopped taking the pulse of American poetry years ago.

57. Well, Trump’s officially lost. Heard this song on my alternative station and thought of Trump, and this thread.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDoU-gE2AXA
    Bastille – Flaws.

    Does Trump bury his flaws, or wear them on his sleeve?

    I think he doesn’t think they are flaws – so wearing them on his sleeve is OK. It’s him. But many DDS (/TDS /BDS …) folk think he’s hugely insecure, down deep. I actually don’t think that. But I think it’s a frequent part of the cartoon version of Trump.

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