eferring to Trump's attacks on Ted Cruz's wife, George Will got a laugh out of
Charles Krauthammer on Fox the other day by saying: “Using the wrong fork is
inappropriate. Wearing white after Labor Day is inappropriate. This is just nasty.”
He's right, but Trump wasn't created ex nihilo. He's a creation of—if you'll excuse my swearing—the Republican establishment.
If the endless surrendering of our elected leaders created the Trumpsters' discontent, our leaders' support of people like Jeb! solidified it. The Trump fans said: if they won't support a conservative, let there be Trump. And the blind rage against Trump could put him in the White House.
(Incidentally, if Trump wants to win he has to pick Cruz as his running mate. A Trump-Cruz ticket might seem unlikely now that they're slogging it out over something that has something to do with each other's wives, but it's the only way he will avoid impeachment after the Democrats take back the Senate in 2018.)
The anti-Trumpsters are no fans of Cruz, and they'll probably choke on their cornflakes to hear that. But it's true. Out here in the cold, windswept hinterlands all the Trump fans hear is how much the establishment hates them. As soon as they read that, they stop reading and go to some other website, never to return. And, frankly, I don't blame them.
As a matter of logic, when one calls a group evil, vicious, or whatever, it is a way of creating a division between oneself and them. It doesn't make sense to then complain that one's party, country, or whatever is divided and fragmented.
John Stossel may have a bad moustache, but he has the right idea where he deconstructs the phrase “Make America great again.” It is magical thinking, he says. It is individuals, not government, that make America great. No nastiness, no rage, just a solid philosophical argument.
I was skeptical about George Friedman's argument that the 21st century will be a curtain call of the 20th: first a great depression, then a major war. But the pieces have fallen into place. To escape it now they'd have to give up more than they're willing to pay.
Western civilization is teetering on the brink of catastrophe and our candidates are arguing about stupid stuff. And in the middle of the battle our intellectual leaders start to sound like they're ready to drink hemlock.
The conservative movement is not cracking up, nor is the alliance between them and us libertarians in danger. Don't get me wrong: I understand negativity. It's a way of preparing ourselves for disaster. It's how our survival instinct works. The survivalists who build bomb shelters have the same idea. So maybe all this anger is just displacement activity, or maybe there's something in the water. But negativity, by its very nature, drives away followers.
What has cracked up is the commentators' credibility. When someone bashes Ted Cruz, I don't believe them. When someone bashes Donald Trump, I don't believe them either.
Meanwhile the Democrats are channeling Neville Chamberlain, who, after returning from Munich, told the British: “Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.” It was the political equivalent of “Nothing can stop us now!” in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry right before Peter Fonda drives his 1969 Dodge Charger in front of a speeding train.
Our enemy is this fad of pretending we care about offending people. We have to be able to tell the truth in order to discuss the real problems. The left has the PC disease bad, and it's spreading across the aisle. We've seen what PC has done to Europe. It must be defeated, even if it means clasping our hands over our childrens' ears for four years.
Last updated mar 26, 2016 4:30 pm
