Sunday Night Journal, March 18, 2018
03/19/2018
I said last week that the big contemporary corporate or government employer is "not meant to produce free citizens. And it doesn't want them." Later I started thinking about how different our biggest corporations--Google and the like--are from their counterparts of thirty or forty or fifty years ago, and yet how similar. Once upon a time there was much worrying about the organization man and the man in the gray flannel suit who worked for a big company and always wore a suit and tie and lived in a suburb and was crushed into conformity. Then along came the '60s and everything began to change, and we were all set free to wear jeans at all times and express our unique and vibrant individuality.
But the essential nature of life in a big organization is the same. It's still just as necessary to fit in as it ever was; only the details have changed. The corporate style is more casual and smiley and whimsical now, and Google may try to establish a playful atmosphere for its employees. But under all that, at a deeper level, it may be even more conformist, and most especially at the biggest and most glamorous corporations, as the firings of Brendan Eich and James Damore illustrate. Their ideological deviations are comparable to being discovered to be a communist (Eich) or declaring yourself to be one (Damore) in the '50s.
I worked for a large corporation for most of the 1980s, and I don't think I would have gotten fired for any political or social opinion. "Human resources" (repulsive phrase) departments had not yet become dominated by left-wing political activists, as they seem to be in many corporations now. I suspect that they don't see what they do in that way, but are like many people of progressive views do not acknowledge any distinction between holding and working for those views and the pursuit of the good. Or, to put it less abstractly, basic human decency.
There's something a bit creepy about the playful surface. You, the employee, may be allowed to build your own desk out of "oversize Tinker Toys," but your utility is in the end the only thing that matters. And the more they put a smiley face on it, the more it makes me think of the Eloi and the Morlocks.
And where marketers in olden days may have tried to sell you something telling you that it will help you fit in, they now try to sell you something by telling you that it will mark you as a defiant individualist. But in the end they're still selling status. And it's still more in the corporate interest for people, whether employees or customers, to behave like a herd, and be treated like one.
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By the way I haven't bought a pair of jeans since sometime in the late '70s. I remember standing in a long checkout line at the supermarket and noticing that every single person ahead of me was wearing jeans. I had worn them as a symbol of rebellion in the late '60s--I would like to say a gesture of individuality, but of course I was only conforming to a group whose opinion I valued above that of the mainstream. And I obviously still had some of the contrary spirit in me, because I decided at that moment that I was through with blue jeans. Not sure when the last pair wore out. In a hot and humid climate they're not even very comfortable most of the time.
*
Rob G sent me this quote from Augusto Del Noce's The Age of Secularization, which was written in the late '60s:
The so-called 'global' revolution becomes an absurd revolt against what exists. It becomes a form of ahistorical activism that cannot distinguish what is positive and what is negative in the existing reality. It faces the following fork in the road: it can either seek a way to escape reality, becoming practically indistinguishable from the beat and hippie movements, or it can enter into alliances with pre-existing forces in the system it fights against, possibly claiming the role of avant-garde and stimulus, but actually serving as a tool.
The beatnik and hippie movements were actually a mixed bag in that respect: the desire to escape reality was part of them, yes, but there was also a desire precisely to find and encounter reality. On the whole the former has proved more appealing and durable, though. Del Noce's last sentence is a pretty fair assessment of how things turned out.
I think when Del Noce says "revolt against what exists" he means simply the existing social order, but in conjunction with the reference to "a way to escape reality," it suggests to me something that seems increasingly common: a belief that we can simply redefine and reconfigure reality to our liking with very few absolute limits. Certain things may be impossible at the moment, such as "uploading" one's consciousness into a machine, but in time we'll figure it out. Never mind that that whole idea is based on an assumption that has no foundation other than that the people who hold it think it's obvious--I mean the idea that one's very self consists of data that can be stored in some physical medium.
The Obergefell decision strikes me as some kind of landmark in that reality-defying movement. Yes, it came as the logical outcome of a long development, but still, the event itself may stand as the marker of a decisive shift, because it makes the denial the law of the land. Until a few decades ago pretty well the entire human race in all times and places would have agreed that the words "husband" and "wife" (in whatever language) refer to specific real things, based on physical sex, and easily and usefully distinguished from each other in both language and practice. Everyone would have agreed that it is intrinsically impossible for a man to have a husband, or a woman to have a wife. But now that idea has been declared officially and legally false, and anyone who continues to believe it is held to be wicked and inhuman and at the very least to be excluded from the society of decent human beings.
It's like having the government declare, and most people accept, that there is no difference between a circle and a rectangle. Other denials and absurd assertions follow by necessity: that circles may have corners, for instance, and that a rectangle may have curves. Reality will have the last word, but I don't know how long it will be before that word is spoken.
*
It's been thirty years, at least, since I read Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, which I consider to be a great masterpiece. and though I haven't re-read it I see no reason to change that opinion. Around the time I read it I bought her other enormous novel of medieval Norway, The Master of Hestviken, but only just now have I finally taken it up. It's a tetralogy (Kristin is a trilogy), and I've now finished the first book, The Axe. On the basis of that I would say that it's going to be at least as good as Kristin. I will no doubt have a lot more to say as I go along, and will try to avoid giving away too much of the plot, on the assumption that most people haven't read it, but for the moment just this: I have never read a more affecting picture of a person utterly broken by remorse. I don't recall being quite as moved by anything in Kristin as I was by this.
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I've also sampled that gum which has come back in style: two episodes of the new Twin Peaks. (The gum is a Twin Peaks reference, in case you're not familiar with the series.) So far my reaction is mixed. Considering that this is truly a sequel, and what happened at the end of the original series, I'm very much hooked already. I have one major reservation: changing standards, and the fact that the new series was not made for traditional network TV, free Lynch (and/or Frost) to include more violence and horror than in the original, and some of that has been hard to take. It's not just the presence of it, but that you feel like it could appear very suddenly at any moment. That isn't going to stop me from watching it, unless it gets very much worse, which I've been told it does not. And of course it's great to see some of the old characters twenty-five years on.
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Over the past eight or nine months I've read a handful of books about some of the problems with Google, Amazon, and the other large corporations of that stripe. The best is Jonathan Taplin's Move Fast and Break Things. Franklin Foer's World Without Mind is good too, as is Adam Alter's Irresistible.
I finished watching the new Twin Peaks last week. I'll refrain from any comments now, but we'll have to compare notes when you've finished.
Posted by: Rob G | 03/19/2018 at 10:17 AM
Definitely. It will be a while for me, because I'm getting it from Netflix one dvd at a time (two episodes per disk).
Posted by: Mac | 03/19/2018 at 10:42 AM
You must be a really fast reader. I just don't have time to read a lot of books apart from those which seem pretty essential, which means not much in the way of current events etc. I do plan to read Deneen's book. Got a copy a few days ago but probably won't start it till after Easter.
Posted by: Mac | 03/19/2018 at 10:44 AM
I think you'll enjoy The Master of Hestviken. I read it about 5 years ago and thought it was excellent. Keep an eye out for Kristen Lavransdatter's parents, who make a brief appearance in one of the books.
Posted by: Craig | 03/19/2018 at 11:03 AM
When I searched for info on MoH, your review of it was on the first page of results. I decided to wait till I'd read the book before reading your review, not only because of possible spoilers but just because I prefer to approach a book with as few preconceptions as possible. I look forward to reading your remarks.
What I was actually looking for I found at Wikipedia: a list of the characters. I kept having trouble keeping track of them. And that's only the first book. In that respect she's more demanding than Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.
Posted by: Mac | 03/19/2018 at 11:09 AM
Yes, do give me a wide berth until you've finished, because I did not avoid spoilers. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the book(s).
Posted by: Craig | 03/19/2018 at 11:36 AM
"You must be a really fast reader."
Not really -- but I watch hardly any TV and maybe one or two movies a week, tops. Generally I read at least two hours a day.
Posted by: Rob G | 03/19/2018 at 12:25 PM
Their ideological deviations are comparable to being discovered to be a communist (Eich) or declaring yourself to be one (Damore) in the '50s.
Right. The new McCarthyism, and from people who, I am sure, despise McCarthy.
Has anyone ever watched The Newsroom?
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 03/19/2018 at 02:22 PM
I was very sad to find out when I started volume 3 of MoH that there was a 4th volume. I thought I was making such great progress.
Craig, how did you recognize Kristen's parents? I've found it now, but I would never have realized who they were. I guess you recognized Björgulfsson, but it's been too long since I read Kristen.
Maclin, I could have used that list of names. Half the time I don't know who is who. I have started volume 4 now, but I've been bogged down for a while.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 03/19/2018 at 02:28 PM
I am consistently amazed that Janet has read everything!
Posted by: Stu | 03/19/2018 at 02:35 PM
It gets tricky to remember even the direct family descent when Fred Johnson's son Jim is not Jim Johnson but Jim Fredson. And then she brings in all the other relatives, and the fostering connections. And then all sorts of complicated rights and obligations, not to mention conflicts, are dependent on all that...it gets crazy-making.
Posted by: Mac | 03/19/2018 at 03:17 PM
"The new McCarthyism, and from people who, I am sure, despise McCarthy."
If you take a step back from the whole thing, it's pretty amusing to see how much the left (broadly speaking), and especially those of our generation, are replicating the very same patterns that they deplored. Especially when they still use the same rhetoric. "Conservatives are threatened by people who are different from them!" they cry, as they yell that a conservative is making them feel unsafe.
Posted by: Mac | 03/19/2018 at 03:21 PM
I probably read for two hours a day. But also probably over half of that is online news, blogs, Facebook, etc. A lot of it is random stuff I wouldn't have known about or bothered about if someone hadn't posted a link to it on Facebook. I very, very, very much need to reduce that time.
Posted by: Mac | 03/19/2018 at 03:25 PM
Speaking from the left....with the advent of Trump my thinking has completely changed. Now all I want is someone not crazy in the White House! I look forward to the day when more conservatives can begin to follow the lead of reasonable folks like Gowdy, Flake, McCain, etc. Both parties need to band together against this lunatic. The problem is we have this large sector of society that is so anti-Government that they are very happy with him.
Posted by: Stu | 03/19/2018 at 03:26 PM
I suppose they are anti-everything, not just government.
Posted by: Stu | 03/19/2018 at 03:42 PM
Watch out, you're starting to do it. :-)
I'm beginning to wonder if we didn't have two nut jobs in the 2016 race, one just more obvious than the other. Hillary's been sounding a little deranged lately, the way she keeps going on blaming other people for her loss, saying white women didn't vote for her because their husbands cowed them. Weird.
Posted by: Mac | 03/19/2018 at 04:01 PM
That's what Trump says, "What about Hillary?" Well, she lost and thus there really isn't much to say about her now. "What about Bill?" Well, he is no longer president. This whataboutism is getting a little old.
Posted by: Stu | 03/19/2018 at 04:06 PM
I didn't say that or mean it. I was referring to your hope for a non-crazy-candidate. We don't seem to be doing well in that department.
Posted by: Mac | 03/19/2018 at 04:16 PM
At this point a non-crazy president :(
Posted by: Stu | 03/19/2018 at 04:20 PM
Stu,
Do you think Pence is crazy?
Posted by: Robert Gotcher | 03/19/2018 at 04:56 PM
Well, I had to find a source for what you said about Hillary Clinton so I could read it with my own eyes before I said anything about it to anybody, and I did, and that is crazy.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 03/19/2018 at 06:51 PM
Yeah, I wasn't kidding about it seeming a little deranged. I imagine a lot of Democrats are trying to ease her out of the way.
Posted by: Mac | 03/19/2018 at 08:22 PM
Read this in Del Noce this morning:
"...today's characteristic phenomenon, which is truly unprecedented, is the terminal crisis of the revolutionary position, at least interpreted as universal human liberation. [It is a] crisis in the sense that the most radical break with tradition is at the same time necessarily linked with the largest coalition of conservative interests that ever appeared in history. It is the largest because it reconciles all the interests that constituted themselves on the basis of or in the name of modernity."
He wrote that in 1968, and if it was true then, it's even more true now. The Left, broadly speaking, has largely abandoned the idea of economic revolution and has hitched its wagon to "cultural liberation" instead. This in turn has been co-opted by globalist "conservativism," what Del Noce calls in other places the "technocratic Right."
In other words, the cultural liberationists have come to serve the purposes of the technocratic/affluent/globalist "right" without realizing it. This helps explain why the progressive left has no problem with corporate power provided that power appears to be pushing things in a "progressive" direction. And why the globalist "right" has come almost fully on board with the Sexual Revolution.
In short, follow the money.
Posted by: Rob G | 03/20/2018 at 07:12 AM
Spot on. The postwar left for the most part never had much stomach for real egg-breaking revolution. The shift to cultural revolution resolved that. And feminism helped a lot. Although it's Marxian it's mainly about personal power, money, and aggrandizement. Kind of a neat trick, really.
Posted by: Mac | 03/20/2018 at 08:24 AM
Okay, nobody responded to my question about The Newsroom, so I am just going to talk about it. ;-)
We really, really liked this show. It is about doing news the right way. It's funny, and intelligent, and I liked the characters. They try to just present the news fairly and accurately, but, of course, their prejudices come through, and theirs aren't the same as ours. Still, all-in-all it is a good series, well done.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 03/20/2018 at 09:48 AM
Robert,
No, I don't think Mike Pence is crazy. I'm sure I am diametrically opposed to most of his political views, but that doesn't make him (or me) crazy, just at odds with regard to policies.
Crazy probably is not a great word, but watching trump in action for over a year now a better one doesn't immediately come to mind. I think anyone on the planet would be a better president of the USA including Kim Jong Un.
Posted by: Stu | 03/20/2018 at 09:53 AM
Janet,
I watch very little TV, but is The Newsroom the show with Jeff Daniels where he once gave that little speech about the USA not being so great anymore? That was a dynamite piece of writing which I completely agree with.
Posted by: Stu | 03/20/2018 at 09:54 AM
I don't know why I let trump bother me. My uncle says, "Just sit back and enjoy the clown show!" He is a lapsed Republican that no longer votes. The very least I would like out of our leaders is to act with decorum and respect to others; that should be one of the qualities of a leader. Mike Pence would do that, so he would be great in comparison. Not to mention he would be a more effective president. It seems that the R's in Congress should just get together and kick trump out so Pence could be in charge and things can get done. None of it makes any sense at all.
Posted by: Stu | 03/20/2018 at 09:59 AM
That is the one, Stu.
I think Kim Jong Un is going a little too far.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 03/20/2018 at 10:18 AM
Yeah, Kim is definitely going too far.
As I've said a jillion times, I don't like Trump and didn't support him. And I said way before the election that I thought he was "not right in the head." But my sympathy for Democratic Trump-haters is limited by the fact that they did so much to get us to this point.
Posted by: Mac | 03/20/2018 at 10:32 AM
I meant to answer your question, Janet, but forgot. No, I haven't seen it. I see it's only available on dvd from Netflix, so it will be some time before I can even consider it. Have to finish Twin Peaks first.
Posted by: Mac | 03/20/2018 at 10:34 AM
Well, except that your sympathy should not just be for me and my ilk. A case can be made that the Republican party is being completely destroyed by trump. Pre-trump Republicans must have also done something to help this along.
I was thinking about all of the R candidates (17?) of two years ago, and everyone except Ted Cruz would be preferable. :)
Posted by: Stu | 03/20/2018 at 10:42 AM
Oh yeah, the Republicans share the blame, but it was mainly the Democrats that made so many people feel like the elites held them in contempt.
That said, though, probably almost any Democrat besides Hillary could have beaten Trump. Her disdain for a very large segment of the population has been evident all along--I mean all the way back to Arkansas.
Posted by: Mac | 03/20/2018 at 11:12 AM
I understand how she feels. Of course I'm not running for office.
Posted by: Stu | 03/20/2018 at 11:15 AM
As somebody or other said, politics requires sincerity, and if you can fake that you've got it made. Hillary's never been good at that, which is in a small way to her credit.
Posted by: Mac | 03/20/2018 at 11:58 AM
"I understand how she feels. Of course I'm not running for office."
If you mean how she feels about losing, that's one thing. If you mean her attitude towards the "deplorables," sorry, but that's liberal elitist rubbish.
Posted by: Rob G | 03/21/2018 at 04:59 AM
Liberal elitist rubbish or not, there is a lot about the trump movement and continued rallies that seems to be more about white nationalism than anything else. I'm not sure what trump stands for other than he is against brown and black people.
Posted by: Stu | 03/21/2018 at 08:05 AM
Listen, I don't like Trump and didn't vote for him. But the fact that he attracts white nationalists doesn't mean that everyone who supports him is one, or that he is one himself. That's just an easy way for liberals and the Left to dismiss the otherwise valid concerns of the white working class and the rural voter. Reduce all their complaints to "racism" and Voila! you don't have to deal with them!
http://www.kirkcenter.org/bookman/article/books-in-little-the-disaffected
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2018/03/learning-from-the-left-behind/
Posted by: Rob G | 03/21/2018 at 08:43 AM
Without having read the things you linked to, I have to more or less agree. I've never seen any evidence that Trump is truly racist. Fairly indifferent to racial concerns, and maybe mildly prejudiced in a way that many, many people on all sides are. And willing to accept votes from bad people. The racism charge has now become more or less a form of noise, because the left uses it against anybody and everybody who disagrees with them.
That said, I actually have a bit of sympathy for that "disdain for a very large segment of the population." Not because they voted for Trump, but because...well, just watching and listening to the masses can be very disheartening for many reasons. I mean, apparently large numbers of people are watching "reality" tv.
Posted by: Mac | 03/21/2018 at 09:03 AM
I'm really happy here since Trump won and I'm glad he did. And I really can't see how any reasonable person can support the Democrats any more.
Posted by: Louise | 03/21/2018 at 09:23 AM
Yes, that latter part I agree with. I'm fairly disheartened with "mass man" in general, much more so than with certain racial and economic subgroups.
Posted by: Rob G | 03/21/2018 at 09:23 AM
This was a great blog post and I'm thinking I must read MoH
Posted by: Louise | 03/21/2018 at 09:24 AM
I would be quite curious to know if any trump policies are helping these folks, as opposed to whatever was going on when obama was president.
Trump seems to go out of his way to pick fights with blacks, ala the colin kaepernick kerfuffel among others. He ran on the "build the wall" chant, and accused the one judge of being biased against him due to Mexican lineage.
I'm sure the examples are endless. His reaction to Charlottesville is pretty hard to defend. Although if I watched fox news I could get some pointers.
And yes, the masses, sigh. I pray and want the best for all, but I can hardly tolerate some members of my family.
Posted by: Stu | 03/21/2018 at 09:24 AM
And not to belabor any of these points, I'm not actively trying to argue with any of you just thinking out loud. But it is interesting that our last two R presidents came from wealth and privilege, and the last two D presidents (especially Clinton) came from the opposite. However, the working people somehow feel that the R party will help them more, and in some way based on electing the president.
Posted by: Stu | 03/21/2018 at 09:32 AM
"However, the working people somehow feel that the R party will help them more, and in some way based on electing the president."
I don't think this is accurate. Many of them crossed party lines to vote for DT. I don't think it had much to do with the GOP, because a lot of those same people voted for Obama in the last two elections.
From what I've seen/read they gravitated towards Trump because he was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as the one candidate who was at least willing to listen to them.
Posted by: Rob G | 03/21/2018 at 11:03 AM
"But it is interesting that our last two R presidents came from wealth and privilege, and the last two D presidents (especially Clinton) came from the opposite."
The question is how many of these were psychos and what were their policies *in practice*, not theory.
Republicans have been useless for social conservatives for decades, as far as I can tell.
Posted by: Louise | 03/21/2018 at 11:13 AM
Not *totally* useless, because they were for the most part at least not actively opposing. But pretty weak, yeah.
"they gravitated towards Trump because he was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as the one candidate who was at least willing to listen to them."
Yes, this is most of it in a nutshell. If people were concerned about the transformation of their communities by massive illegal immigration, the only answer that the elites, R or D, had was "You are a disgusting xenophobe." And similarly for several other issues.
Posted by: Mac | 03/21/2018 at 12:39 PM
"Trump seems to go out of his way to pick fights with blacks, ala the colin kaepernick kerfuffel among others. He ran on the "build the wall" chant, and accused the one judge of being biased against him due to Mexican lineage."
But Trump picks fights with anybody and everybody who displease him in any way. I see no racial pattern in that. Kaepernick's gesture offended a lot of people, not because he was making a statement against racism (or whatever it was), but because they have a religious reverence for the flag. I think they overdo that, but I respect it.
As for the wall, see previous comment. As for the Mexican judge, yeah, that was an obnoxious and unfair thing to say. But things like that are said every day on the other side. It's SOP to *assume* that ethnicity is definitive in situations like this, that white judges and juries will be unfair to black people. I don't understand how anyone can insist that this is ok in one direction but not in the other.
Posted by: Mac | 03/21/2018 at 12:49 PM
"I don't understand how anyone can insist that this is ok in one direction but not in the other."
Right.
Posted by: Louise | 03/21/2018 at 12:56 PM
In short, Trump's a jerk. I wonder if he would even bother to deny that. Charging him unfairly with white nationalism only ends up making him seem like a victim, which he doesn't deserve.
Posted by: Mac | 03/21/2018 at 02:00 PM
If Trump were just there, being all "willing to listen,” I'd not find him so despicable. But he's actually an unscrupulous huckster who has no qualms at all about playing on people's prejudices, like when he began his campaign for the nomination by talking about all those Mexican "rapists" coming across the border.
Posted by: Marianne | 03/21/2018 at 02:46 PM
Yes, he is. The thing is, though, that there are actually criminals coming across the border. And by refusing to acknowledge that concern, and calling anyone who talked about it a xenophobe, the mainstream politicians and the press created the opening for Trump or someone like him to be a demagogue on the issue. That's what Rob and I are talking about--people feeling like nobody else was listening to them.
Posted by: Mac | 03/21/2018 at 03:26 PM
I'm sure there are criminals coming in. I grew up in Miami in the 70s/80s when Castro was emptying his jails so his criminals could come to the USA. I'm not a big fan of illegal immigration. However, there must be a better way of handling this issue. For what it's worth I used to live 80 miles from the Mexican border in New Mexico, and no one out there seemed very concerned over border security.
Posted by: Stu | 03/21/2018 at 04:30 PM
For what it's worth I used to live 80 miles from the Mexican border in New Mexico, and no one out there seemed very concerned over border security.
Yes, but things have changed a lot in the past 10 or 15 years. I have friends who live very close to the border in Texas, and their friends who own a lot a property on the border used to leave food and water and blankets in their empty cabins over the winter for people who came over the border, but they don't do it anymore because the people who are coming over are increasingly dangerous.
The whole immigration business is infinitely more complex than anybody understands and if you have worked with a lot of illegal immigrants, you see so much more than you do if you are just hearing about it on the news, or observing it from outside.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 03/21/2018 at 06:25 PM
Illegal immigration is a huge problem everywhere. Yet liberals are still carrying on as if it's not. That's just plain dumb and/or evil.
Posted by: Louise | 03/21/2018 at 06:42 PM
"The whole immigration business is infinitely more complex than anybody understand..."
Yes, that's the main thing I would say about it. But the public debate about it is simplistic and unrealistic on all sides.
Posted by: Mac | 03/21/2018 at 09:31 PM
A good piece in The American Conservative about the ongoing debasement of political life:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/donald-trump-fbi-mccabe-comey-race-to-the-bottom/
Not long after I read that yesterday, I saw the story about Joe Biden, former vice-president of the United States of America, saying he would have "beat[en] the hell out of Trump", and today Trump replying in kind. Let's let 'em do it, and hope they both lose.
Posted by: Mac | 03/22/2018 at 02:22 PM
Men over 70 fighting, just what everyone wants to see!
Posted by: Stu | 03/22/2018 at 03:51 PM
This is bleakly funny:
https://theweek.com/articles/760471/stormy-daniels-crushing-president-trump-game
Posted by: Mac | 03/23/2018 at 10:11 AM
This was a good zinger at the end of that article. "When it comes to America's rogues' gallery, the porn star will always trump the reality star."
Posted by: Stu | 03/23/2018 at 10:49 AM
Yeah. The whole piece is a zinger. Does anybody really believe Trump did not have sex with this woman? Does anybody much care? Everybody knows what kind of man he is--he's bragged about it. Is he even embarrassed, apart from the fact that it surely must put him in hot water with his wife? But apparently there is some legal danger, so he has to care about that.
Posted by: Mac | 03/23/2018 at 11:13 AM
What is the legal danger?
And at no point has Trump presented himself as a "family values" kind of guy. He has said (and acted as though) he is pro-life. I don't understand why his enemies have brought up the story, but then maybe I'm missing some of the details, because I just don't care who Trump has been in bed with. His supporters certainly don't care.
Posted by: Louise | 03/23/2018 at 05:49 PM
The legal danger, according to that article, is something having to do with the payments made to these women. They could be a violation of campaign finance laws.
I don't think anybody besides his wife and maybe others in his family cares who Trump has been in bed with. But the "why his enemies have brought up the story" is because they want very desperately to bring him down. His being president is for liberals the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not. It's not just a bad thing, it's a blasphemous, sacrilegious thing. "The thing that should not be" as someone put it in one of those podcasts that Grumpy recommended.
Posted by: Mac | 03/24/2018 at 10:55 AM
There was a discussion of Trump's racism on the Commentary podcast. No body could call Sohrab Amari, an Iranian convert to Catholicism, or Podhoretz, a middle aged Jewish conservative, reflexive liberals or leftists. As I said before, the fun of this podcast is the range of disagreement. But all four of them, Podhoretz, Rothman, Ahmari and Abe Greenwald agreed that Trump has to be a racist. Because whenever he gets into one of his self-destructive endless Twitter battles, its with a brown or black person. I forget all the examples that came up. The Mexican judge and the gold star parents were two of them, but there were half a dozen others. Race, whether its black or brown, seems to be some kind of personal trigger for him. At one time one could have said 'this guy is 70 years old and from Queens and he's just old fashioned in his attitude to "the blacks" - as he would have grown up saying.' But there's just too many instances where he flies off the handle for black or brown people. Its too much of a pattern.
Posted by: grumpy | 03/24/2018 at 01:37 PM
Louise, how do you see signing a bill into law that gives five hundred million dollars to Planned Parenthood as pro-life?
Posted by: grumpy | 03/24/2018 at 01:39 PM
'this guy is 70 years old and from Queens and he's just old fashioned in his attitude to "the blacks"'
That's more or less the way it looks to me. Part of the problem--most of the problem actually--with calling him "a racist" is that as that charge is made in today's climate it makes no distinction between a mild or fairly mild prejudice and advocating white supremacy. It depends a lot on who the accused is, and whether the hive decides to go after him or her. Joe Biden would have been crucified for his "clean, articulate black man" remark about Obama if he'd been a Republican. So: "Trump is mildly racist"--ok, I'll buy that. "Trump is *a racist*"--not with the implications that generally carries now, as an all-encompassing, all-you-need-to-know label.
I don't really see the pattern you describe but I don't follow Trump's barking the way professional pundits do, so I may be missing it. As I said earlier, he attacks everybody who displeases him. He's clearly a thin-skinned and spiteful person who can't abide criticism.
Posted by: Mac | 03/24/2018 at 03:17 PM
As for the Planned Parenthood thing: no better example of how generally hollow the Republican establishment is. Though to give them their due, they probably, as with their support of the NRA, are making pretty cool-headed cost/benefit appraisals in political terms.
Posted by: Mac | 03/24/2018 at 03:21 PM
I don't, Francesca, but I wrote my last comment before I heard about it and possibly before he even signed it.
Posted by: Louise | 03/24/2018 at 06:41 PM
"The legal danger, according to that article, is something having to do with the payments made to these women. They could be a violation of campaign finance laws."
Thanks. I see.
Posted by: Louise | 03/24/2018 at 06:42 PM
I would feel as if I were being unduly influenced by leftists if I couldn't call Trump a racist in case it meant whatever they mean by it.
The problem with podcasts is of course that finding information in them would take hours. I recall that the four guys listed at least six incidents in which Trump lost it completely and went after some opponent in a self destructive way. The best examples were perhaps the Mexican family and the gold star parents, so they stuck in my mind, but there were numerous others - all involving brown and black people. Its not a case of Trump's general rudeness and inability to act like an adult in public. It is going after someone way beyond what is called for, and in a way that would be evidently self-destructive to anyone in control of his behaviour. These 'someone's' have been black or brown too often for it it to be an accident.
Posted by: grumpy | 03/24/2018 at 07:39 PM
The problem isn't so much what leftists think as that nobody can be sure exactly what it means in any specific case now without looking closely into the specifics. In this case the specifics are a semi-conjectural inference, like "disparate impact" studies in which a higher (or lower) occurrence a greater presence of black people in some category is held to be a proof of racism.
This particular thing just doesn't seem to me worth a lot of attention when it's so overwhelmingly clear that Trump is a jerk in general.
Posted by: Mac | 03/25/2018 at 09:08 AM
And how selective is it? If one were following Trump more closely, how many instances with white people would you find.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet Cupo | 03/25/2018 at 12:31 PM
A lot, clearly. And what topics does he get most exercised about? Etc.
I'm not, by the way, making the positive statement that he's not racist in some degree. Very possibly he is. But---we hear about how the FBI couldn't get Al Capone for his big crimes, but eventually put him in jail for tax evasion. This is a bit like pursuing a possible case for tax evasion when you have an airtight one for extortion.
It occurs to me that maybe the overuse and dilution of "racist" has something to do with the recent tendency to go beyond that and say someone is a white nationalist or white supremacist.
Posted by: Mac | 03/25/2018 at 03:01 PM
I guess it depends how much one is willing to accept that the idea of wanting to keep America a "white" country is racist. I sort of think that his what his MAGA campaign and continued rally cry is all about. That fuels all of these spats he gets into with the brown and black people. Along with his wacky inability to call out the white supremacist movement.
I was at dinner the other night with an Indian friend of mine from South Africa. He was telling me that pretty much everyone he knows, along with African Americans his kids are friends with not only feel trump is racist but have some fear that America will fundamentally change in some way that will be very against them as non-whites. That is a pretty big effect in a very short period of time, from the end of the Obama presidency to now.
Posted by: Stu | 03/26/2018 at 08:18 AM
Show me where Trump said that he wants to keep America a white country and I'll say "ok, he's a racist." Otherwise this is just the same inference, and in fact as you state it one that I think is incorrect. To coin a phrase, this is how we got Trump: by reading legitimate concerns as being all about race. I agree that his hemming and hawing about actual racists among his supporters is reprehensible.
Making it all about race when it isn't only pushes us further along the road of making it all about race in fact. Might as well go ahead and start carving up the country into racial enclaves.
You don't suppose that being constantly told by news media et al that Trump is a racist has had any effect on your friend's perception? Many Christians *feel* that Christians are now being persecuted. That doesn't mean they're right.
Posted by: Mac | 03/26/2018 at 09:12 AM
It's really just all about him, Mac. He could do something to shape the narrative, and he refuses. Something that comes directly from his mouth cannot be overly distorted by the media. Silence says a lot.
Posted by: Stu | 03/26/2018 at 09:21 AM
I need to just quit fighting it and accept the fact that the left, speaking broadly, is never never never going to see the role it's had in getting us to this situation.
Posted by: Mac | 03/26/2018 at 10:03 AM
I don't understand your comment. I do get how things from the left have had a role in where we are now. That too much in one direction, all white men are bad, leads to push-back. However, that does not mean the president could not do something to make himself more appealing to non-whites.
Posted by: Stu | 03/26/2018 at 10:15 AM
"However, that does not mean the president could not do something to make himself more appealing to non-whites."
If that's all you're saying, no argument.
Posted by: Mac | 03/26/2018 at 10:37 AM
Trump seems to have quite a lot of non-white supporters.
Posted by: Louise | 03/27/2018 at 07:35 AM
Or some, anyway. :-) I don't know about "quite a lot."
Posted by: Mac | 03/27/2018 at 08:37 AM
It's just an impression. I haven't done a study.
Posted by: Louise | 03/27/2018 at 08:45 AM
I don't know for sure, either, but I think he has fewer than the average politician.
Posted by: Mac | 03/27/2018 at 09:03 AM
I couldn't find much about his *supporters* with some quick googling, but I found this exit poll.
I don't really trust CNN but anyway:
https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls
If I understand the chart correctly, 8% of the black people in this sample of voters voted for Trump. Given that the overall percentage of black people in the US is 12%, that doesn't seem too bad. Especially since I'm under the impression that blacks tend to vote for Democrats more than Republicans.
I wouldn't care about US politics at all except that I live here *and* I care about truth, and I've been appalled by the anti-Trump Machine since 2016. Their clear commitment to lies and deception should offend anyone with who has any sense of justice.
But most of the elite are filthy little commies anyway and so this is just par for the course.
This is why they won't admit any fault. Filthy little commies do not admit fault.
Posted by: Louise | 03/27/2018 at 10:04 AM
"If I understand the chart correctly, 8% of the black people in this sample of voters voted for Trump"
Sorry, I hate statistics! I was confusing myself! the chart does indeed show a low number of black people who voted for Trump. I had initially misread it as "8% of the people who voted for him were black"
Posted by: Louise | 03/27/2018 at 10:09 AM
However much the "anti-Trump Machine" may lie, they can't come close to lying as much as he does.
I think we will see those percentages go down for future elections now that people have seen DJT as president. That was back when even those of us who did not vote for him felt hopeful.
Posted by: Stu | 03/27/2018 at 10:15 AM
"However much the "anti-Trump Machine" may lie, they can't come close to lying as much as he does."
I don't agree. Because he is one man and they are legion, and they have the opinion-forming apparatus.
Posted by: Louise | 03/27/2018 at 10:24 AM
This was interesting:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/
"However, although Trump fared little better among blacks and Hispanics than Romney did four years ago, Hillary Clinton did not run as strongly among these core Democratic groups as Obama did in 2012. Clinton held an 80-point advantage among blacks (88% to 8%) compared with Obama’s 87-point edge four years ago (93% to 6%). In 2008, Obama had a 91-point advantage among blacks."
Posted by: Louise | 03/27/2018 at 10:26 AM
"I've been appalled by the anti-Trump Machine since 2016. Their clear commitment to lies and deception should offend anyone with who has any sense of justice."
Some time back a discussion sort of like this was going on and Janet said "Don't make me defend Trump." That's sort of how I feel. I've said from the very beginning that I thought Trump unfit for the presidency, and just a downright bizarre person and phenomenon. And yet, though I wouldn't put it as strongly as you do, Louise, I find myself objecting to the relentless distortions of the press, and their obvious discarding of all pretense of fairness in their attempt to bring him down. It is, as you say, an offense against truth. It's also self-defeating in some degree, as people who aren't totally on board with the program just start ignoring them, and then sometimes end up in a right-wing swamp of even more unreliable sources.
Posted by: Mac | 03/27/2018 at 10:33 AM
It's really just all about him, Mac. He could do something to shape the narrative, and he refuses. Something that comes directly from his mouth cannot be overly distorted by the media. Silence says a lot.
If he said something, would it get reported, or if it was reported, would it be twisted in a way that it would be made to seem negative instead of positive. So many times on NPR when Trump has done something that might seem good to Democrats, the news people do their best to explain why it is not really good.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 03/27/2018 at 12:09 PM
Neo-neocon has dissected several instances of that kind of twisting, and like me she's no Trump fan. The general effort to de-legitimize and get rid of Trump is really not rationally deniable. We might debate whether it's conscious and deliberate or not, but it's very obviously there.
Posted by: Mac | 03/27/2018 at 12:43 PM
"So many times on NPR when Trump has done something that might seem good to Democrats, the news people do their best to explain why it is not really good."
It's just like FOX on Obama but from the opposite side. Didn't like it then, don't like it now. And I'm no fan of either guy.
Both sides have a noise machine. I try my best to avoid/ignore both.
Posted by: Rob G | 03/27/2018 at 12:57 PM
The only news I ever hear is on NPR while I'm driving. It's the only radio station I can get for a good part of the way. I don't always have the radio on, but I need something to keep me awake. I wish I could afford Sirius so I could just listen to oldies.
Sometimes I feel bad about living in a bubble, but not often.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 03/27/2018 at 01:23 PM
And you are right, Rob, it is like Fox with Obama--nasty either way.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 03/27/2018 at 02:30 PM
I believe that Trump is very damaging to an already seriously damaged society. I'd like to see him replaced sooner rather than later. However, I would want his demise to come about through truth-telling and the Democratic process, according to the Constitution. If those who are trying to bring about his demise can't do it that way, they don't deserve to have it happen. I would have said the same thing about Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter,... Lincoln,... Jefferson, Adams, and Washington.
And if you don't like the Constitution, change it.
Posted by: Robert Gotcher | 03/27/2018 at 06:27 PM
I don't watch any TV news except on rare occasions, like when there's a hurricane coming. I can hardly stand most of it, no matter what the ideological brand is. Just frustratingly superficial. I get pretty much all my news from wandering on the web. Sometimes I see minor stories and miss big ones.
"I believe that Trump is very damaging to an already seriously damaged society."
Agreed.
Posted by: Mac | 03/27/2018 at 06:36 PM