Evaluating most things in real time is a difficult process, because you do not have the benefit of seeing how things end. It is why hot-takes in the middle of a news event always sound stupid in retrospect. Those evaluations are more about the mood of the moment and the desire for attention than sensible analysis. It is only after the thing ends and the dust has settled that you can get a grip on what happened. This is the case with the Trump phenomenon, which ended months ago.
Now, we do not know if Trump will run again. He says he will start doing rallies this fall, but so far, no news on that front. For now, he has been commenting about old enemies and endorsing candidates who have said nice things about him. Elise Stefanik, for example, has gotten the Trump endorsement to replace Liz Cheney. The fact that Stefanik is one of the most liberal Republicans in the House and is nothing but a sock puppet for the establishment makes no difference.
That is a good jumping off point to think about why the Trump years never amounted to more than lots of noise. The Stefanik example is part of a pattern with Trump with regards to how he does politics. He tended to endorse candidates on whether they would win, rather than if they were on his side politically. He endorsed Mitt Romney, for example, who has been a life-long fink. He also endorsed the two Georgia senators, who were everything he allegedly opposed.
Trump’s politics were always an extension of Trump’s business approach, which was just an advanced form of personal brand management. He wanted the Trump brand to carry weight in politics in the same way it worked in real estate. For most of his life, the game was to promote the brand, while others found deals where the brand could be the difference between success and failure. The Trump brand would push the deal over the top and thus earn Trump a lion’s share of the profits.
This started way back in the 1980’s when Trump figured out that the way for him into the world of big-time real estate was to create a media image for himself as the big time deal maker. He was the real life Gordon Gecko, the character from the 1980’s hit movie Wall Street. This got him on television chat shows where he perfected the style that has become synonymous with Trump. The pop culture icon became the brand that would make Trump the real estate mogul.
From the late-80’s forward, the Trump business model was simple. He would swap some of his brand prestige for shares in a deal, like a casino. The people on the other end needed the brand to promote the project to investors and politicians, so they were willing to cut Trump in on the deal. Genuinely smart real estate people from the Trump organization would then swoop in a maximize the profit for Trump Inc. They got their money first and often at the expense of the resulting project.
The genius of this approach is every new casino or resort property with his name on it enhanced the brand, thus opening up new deals. Trump Inc. became a frog in a pond full of lily pads. They just hopped from one to the next. Unlike other real estate developers, they did not have to find new deals and cultivate the political relationships required to make the deal a possibility. Others did that and brought these opportunities to the Trump people, hoping to get the Trump endorsement.
This worked amazingly well in real estate, but not in politics. The Trump brand never counted for much in Washington, where the voters are looked upon as ants at the picnic, rather than a source of strength. Trump’s miracle win in 2016 meant nothing in a world where 95% of incumbents win reelection. Compounding it, the only deals that happen in Washington are the deals that benefit the insiders. The only thing Trump could swap his brand value for were deals his voters hated.
That was the story of his four years. One side of the uniparty was focused only on destroying the Trump brand. Trump never experienced that sort of conflict in the business world, so he was ill-equipped to counter it. The other side of the uniparty was willing to bring him deals so he could attach his name to them, but those deals did nothing for his brand or his voters. Throwing open the jails and giving the store away to rich people was the equivalent of a Trump casino in Tehran.
Where the Trump style failed the most was in the organization. In the 1980’s, Trump attracted a group of very savvy people into his organization. They were the ones who did the deal making and profit extraction from those deals. This allowed Trump to be the head of brand management. Trump’s people knew their job was to make sure the final deal boosted the Trump brand, because that meant more deals. Trump’s role was to use his brand to endorse the deal and take the credit.
It was a good system that was never replicated in Washington. His team was ignorant of how things were done in Washington. His son-in-law was actually working for interests outside the Trump administration. Official Washington was happy to send a stream of their people to fill posts and undermine Team Trump. His organization never had a chance to turn the Trump brand into anything, because they did not know how to do it, even if the brand had real value to official Washington.
That is why the Trump years were lots of promises, but no delivery. Team Trump would bring out the brand hoping someone would come forward with a deal. Either the deal on offer was garbage or there was no deal to be had. Trump’s DACA moves are a great example of the no deal. He was sure he could trade that for his wall. Instead, they ignored him entirely. Trump was begging them to do a deal on DACA and they just ignored him harder. The art of the deal had no market in DC.
The Trump phenomenon is a good example of why democratic reform is impossible in a liberal democratic system. The only way to reform the system is to understand its internal workings and have people willing to make the changes inside the system to create the desired reforms. The reformer has no choice but to engage the system through the rules of the system. There is no way to reform the system from the outside, as the outsider has no access to the system.
For generations now, the political system has been selecting for people who defend the interests of he system and the people in it. You cannot get a job at any level of politics unless you are useful to the people in the system. The entry points of the system, primaries, elections, staffing jobs, are all designed to filter out people who could be unhealthy for the system and select for those who will defend the system. Even if a reformer sneaks in, they are surrounded by antibodies of the system.
This is something the paleoconservative thinker Sam Francis recognized with the conservative movement a million years ago. As soon as they decided to engage in democratic politics, they would be forced to trade their conservative principles for access to the system. Otherwise, they would be shut off from the system. Over the years conservatism has traded everything away. They are now a shuffling husk that staggers long behind the Left living on scraps.
This is the inevitable crisis of liberal democracy. Those “liberal principles” that are supposed to constrain the excesses of democracy end up becoming obstacles to democratic reform. On the other hand, a genuine effort to reform the system from outside is framed as a threat to liberal principles. Trump immediately became Hitler, the great bogeyman of liberalism, solely on the grounds that he was a creature that existed outside the liberal democratic system.
That is the real lesson of the Trump years. There is no way to reform liberal democracy from the inside, as it has evolved to prevent reform. It is impossible to reform from the outside as liberal democracy is defined by opposition to outside pressure. That means the only reform possible is replacement, which requires a rejection of both liberalism and democracy as anything more than expedients. Real reform begins with the rejection of the system and its moral framework.
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Trump was the first and last “white” president, which means he is the first person to have been explicitly, unapologetically “white” while presidenting. What neither he nor most of the rest of America realized at the time was that the combined forces of the Media, the political establishment, academia, the military and intelligence agencies and practically every NGO on the planet are intentionally goading white men into responding to the most racially provocative attacks I have ever seen in my life. Pure insults beamed over the airwaves toward any and all white men. Trump was a magnet for it because he didn’t seem to realize that he was being subjected to a ritualized, intentional process of public humiliation for the enjoyment of the ruling elite. He was the heel. The stooge. The mark. He was so confident in himself that he made himself ridiculous… Because ultimately all white men will be made to seem ridiculous as a kind of retribution for historical crimes that the entire planet wants to see us pay for. Until you realize that you will struggle to understand such things as opioid crisis or the pandemic response. The whole point is to make you suffer and look stupid because they want to create the narrative that white men are stupid, violent, racists. There is nothing at all in our current times that is a beacon of hope for white men except maybe Elon Musk launching Spaceships. The last thing on earth feminists, Jews, black nationalists, Communists etc wanted was for white men to feel inspired by Trump’s successes.
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1
The left’s “double standards” are just anti white. That’s really what it comes down to.
6
Not exactly. Trump made a special emphasis to let thousands of violent black criminals out of prison. His pardons were pathetic, especially Kwame Kilpatrick and Lil’ Wayne. Trump wasn’t a white President he just doesn’t hate us and thinks it is acceptable for us to group interests, which is an improvement over 99% of the politicians in Washington.
7
While I get what you’re saying, I’m not sure I’d call Trump a ‘White President’. He’s certainly not an unapologetic advocate for Whites on the same level as Jared Taylor or John Derbyshire or Gregory Hood.
He never mentioned the fact that pretty much all the discoveries and advances that together make up civilized life as we know it— in science, exploration, technology, government, philosophy, the arts— were accomplished by Whites.
He only briefly and occasionally alluded to the wave of virulent anti-Whiteness that animates the Media, Academia, Hollywood, and even the Military.
He never pointed out how Whites are the only group not allowed to express ethnic pride: Blacks have BLM, Hispanics have LaRaza, but Whites expressing the same sort of pride in who we are is condemned as “racist White supremacy”.
Trump occasionally flirted around the edges of that awareness, but never really took a stand for it.
Trump was useful as a way of lifting the curtain and letting us see things.
13
He did a lot of damage to Conservative Inc. That was the real value of Trump. They still gave oligarch support and there are plenty of MAGA hat wearing types singing the old civic nationalist tunes, but it is no longer a unified entity. Those MAGA people are antiwar, anti-globalism and increasingly anti-immigration. The ground is better for us after Trump in many ways, despite the crackdowns and pogroms.
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He showed that the rulers of the country hate white men. And they are willing to do whatever it takes to get rid of us. For Trump, they had to expose the deep state and fake FBI warrants. They would go much further if necessary.
People say “Trump made the left hate us” – but they already hated you this much, they just didn’t need to ramp it up.
16
He also put Hilary Clinton’s office-holding career to an end, for which he can’t be thanked enough. She probably isn’t the bogeyman a lot normies cons make her out to be, but the gratuitous media fawning during her campaigns was revolting, and now we don’t have to work about it anymore.
1
Anti-war, anti-globalization, and anti-immigration, and America First is the message that resonates with the MAGA crowd. Pat Buchanan tried with that years ago, but perhaps it took a guy with a bigger name and brand to successfully sell that message. I don’t know how sincere Trump is about it, but it’s here and not going away.
4
Trump also did a lot of helpful damage to the corporate media hacks at CNN etc. Too bad he never focused attention on the New York CFR that coordinates the media on behalf of the oligarchy.
6
Yup. Trump was bad in a lot of ways but I ask you this. What was the PRACTICAL alternative? Bad as Trump was, would not Hildabeast been worse – far, Far, FAR WORSE!?!? I’ve been around the block a time or two and in my experience the universe seldom – damned near NEVER! – offers us a simple choice between “good” and “bad”. Hell! The choice is almost never even between ” bad” and “awful”. Usually the choice is between “terrible” and “OMFG!”!!! I hoped that Trump would do at least some of what he promised but I did not actually expect him to do so. I really only voted for him in the hopes of staving off what is happening now for another 4 (possibly 8 or even longer if Pence succeeded him) years. Trump as POTUS was not great. But can anyboody honestly say that Hildemort as POTUS would have produced results more to our liking?
(And if you do say that then I want to know how to get in contact with your dealer. Whatever you’re toking is PRIMO!)
I guess this just shows we’re getting closer to the time where we’ll be having to spit on our hands, raise the black flag and start slitting throats. When the time comes, that chicken s*** fence around the capital area won’t do the trick.
4
““And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.””
Outside a massive outside catalyst, such as an embarrassing military defeat or economic collapse, a ‘soft’ totalitarian version of this will be our world in 30 years.
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It won’t be “soft”. It’s never soft.
2
I don’t see it taking that long. I’m almost 70 so I do not expect to see it but my son is 52 and I expect him to do so. The rabid zeal I see daily in the Left’s attacks on any/all dissent/departure from the orthodoxy of the moment – even within their own ranks – coupled with (what I perceive to be) increasing calls for “reeducation” of heterodoxy tells me they will not be so patient as to wait 3 decades. Hell’s bells! The level of hatred and vituperation exhibited HERE against my generation (newsflash: if we’re reading the ZMan and commenting here then we’re probably NOT typical boomers 😉) suggests to me that the folks of the same generations as those who so eagerly attack me and my generation who are not on the DR will not be so patient. 30 years? Nah. More like 2030 – if they wait that long. I truly suspect that wokism is just getting warmed/wound up. Given the utter cravenness of the current iteration of the SCOTUS, I see nothing to stop the leftists from doing whatever the hell they damned well please.
(One (old) man’s opinion and you know what those are like.)
2
In 30 years? Is it the 1990’s again?
1
Who was it, memory is a bit foggy, but someone back when said that all Trump is a NY bullshitter who got lucky. Hmmm. Seems about right.
Now there is a bit of groundswell for Florida governor DeSantis. Admittedly a far improvement from the normal pozzed leadership we have but you see the future disappointment coming. By the way he is having some type of Florida government conference in Israel in the future, so there is that for ya.
My hope is some type of invading redeemer from the outside. Scatter the roaches here and let us rebuild. That’s all I have because nothing can be done like, I dunno, draining the swamp.
5
DeSantis could be the Reagan the establishment needs, but I don’t know if he has the skill or that have the smarts for a replay of that scenario.
4
He will be immediately dependant on wealthy donors.
And the wealthy donors are attached like barnacles to the establishment (or vice versa), which is how the wealthy maintain control of the system against pesky things like the will of the people.
If Trump were to personally bankroll DeSantis, then potentially DeSantis could forge his own path, since he wouldn’t be dependent on said donors; how likely that is won’t be known for some time. One thing I always said about Trump was that he was mostly immune from the influence of the corrupt donor class since he didn’t need their money. Anyone else without the personal fortune of a Trump attempting reforms as Trump said he wanted to do will run slam into the donor wall.
Also re: DeSantis; the establishment is signaling that they’re going to run Charlie Crist against DeSantis and try to eject DeSantis from the scene that way. Crist is nothing more than a political vampire, bereft of anything resembling principles, which makes him a perfect vehicle for the establishment to take out DeSantis. If DeSantis were to lose his own reelection bid against a character such as Crist, he’d be mortally wounded as a potential 24 presidential candidate.
2
If we had someone truly good, donors be damned. Money is influence, but the state is power. A man at the head of the state can just start arresting and executing donors or even just taking their money. The left has always recognized this in a way the American so-called “right” never could. Our side governs and their side rules.
On the day of Trump’s inauguration, hundreds or even thousands of leftists were arrested in DC. Yeah, not donors, but still illustrative of the point. Over the next 18 months every single person had the charges dropped. Even people who attacked Trump supporters right in front of police had their charges dropped, even when the victim kept in touch with prosecutors and were willing to travel back to DC to testify. All of the Jan 6th arrestees and even people arrested months after the fact are all facing long prison sentences for much lesser crimes and dropped or lesser charges are not in the cards.
Remember bike-lock guy? He got probation. Cantwell is sitting in federal prison for an insult. This was repeated all over the country. Leftists attacked anyone not a leftist, even kids and women. If they are even arrested the charges are dropped. Anyone attempting to defend themselves end up in prison. Ditto BLM. BLM can stop cars and beat drivers, but anyone trying to get away gets arrested and prosecuted.
After the J45 event in Jan 2017, Trump should have sicked the feds on all those anti-Trump rioters and sent a message that this was not going to be accepted. But he surrounded himself with cucks and traitors.
So what.
Every government throughout history, with few Rey exceptions, has been been dependent on or heavily influenced by their wealthy components.
The only question a dissident should ask himself regarding a right-wing politician is “Can he become a Caesar?”. If not, he’s irrelevant.
He’s better than most, but I don’t see DeSantis being that person.
9
Fascism, anyone? It seems to be the only game in town. Though we may need to call it something else.
8
No deal: What we have now is merely a variant of fascism. Old style fascism allied the state with corporate power, with the state being the senior partner. “Liberal democracy” is the same alliance, but with the corporations being the senior partner and wielding the real power. So dump the idea of “fascism” being any kind of an answer.
7
Facism was the logical next step in Western development. Its no coincidence that China has just stumbled into something eerily like Nazi domestic policy despite starting from Mao and Lenin. Fascism drank deep from our civilization where it gets the fasces bundle, the Roman salute, or the eagle (things that were/are used in American symbolism). Or that attempts to fight fascism just end up destroying Western civilization (the colonial empires, the statues, the architectural styles, Western demographics, the philosophy and religion).
America, a product of the old Enlightenment, just happened to still command the resources of the old world. Thus, Pax Americana was just History grounding to a stop. As it recedes, history is returning. Europe is asserting its independence again as it tried to do in the interwar years. China and Persia are growing powerful again, the Red Indians (reinforced from South of the Rio Grande) are recovering North America. The last 500 years of White Ascendancy are over and even Charles Martels victory over Islam is being repelled.
Fascism, really highly-centralized, undemocratic, nationalism, is the answer but its one that Western civilization failed to implement. Now the Middle Kingdom will use it to return to prominence.
5
The classic answer to oligarchy was tyranny. It will be called something that has a little resonance with democracy, but it will be tyranny.
1
Corporatism is more descriptive, and doesn’t have the negative stigma of “Fascism”. Hard to convince the masses that the left/right circus is just a distraction, and harder still to get them to re-focus on the Corporatist overlords.
“The other side of the uniparty was willing to bring him deals so he could attach his name to them, but those deals did nothing for his brand or his voters.”
McConnell reportedly bragged that Trump would sign any deal they put in front of him. I wondered if it was because he got to keep the pen but Z’s observation is probably more likely the reason.
Taking all the pitfalls and required changes to his habits the presidency represented, I wonder if a lot of his failure to adapt to the political world stems from age.
Trump is an egomaniac who has been wildly successful as a real estate mogul, author, television personality, reality show host and social media star. Given all that success it is hard to tell yourself you are in over your head after one of the most improbable wins in the history of elected politics. Add age in a successful transition was probably impossible.
Trump was clearly at a stage in life where he was bored with details and long term planning (which made all the claims of 4D chess and Q darkly humorous). I am in my 60s and while I have a lot of energy I no longer have any desire to spend it on things that don’t captivate me. It was clear that Trump was having a great time hosting rallies and dancing to YMCA. Doing boring things like figuring out how to counter Democrats’ efforts to sabotage the wall or steal the election simply didn’t engage him.
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McConnell is married to long-time CFR member Elaine Chao, who served in Trump’s cabinet. Liz Cheney is the daughter of former CFR director Dick Cheney. It’s hard to score when your own team is playing for the other side.
8
In some ways there is no other side, just one side. Trump was an outsider who crashed the party then wanted to be the guest of honor
9
That’s actually a perfect analogy.
1
There is no political solution. Trump showed us that. Not sure there is any solution, tbh, most dissidents are over 60 years old. But we’ll see.
11
“There is no political solution. Trump showed us that.” Maybe. Maybe not. Trump and Pence could have precipitated a political solution by refusing to count or validate the fraudulent electoral votes from the compromised swing states. Pence failed, and Trump refused to cross the Rubicon (perhaps wisely, for lack of troops). But that would have been a political solution. Perhaps the chance will present itself again.
3
Prolly a good reason to hope DJT runs again and somehow get back as POTUS. If nothing else, he is an agent of change and four more years of his mulish regime will hasten along the dissolution of the Uniparty.
By touting his ‘disruptive’ influence, perhaps Trump should curry favor with the legion of Fembots in the gender bender studies and boost his chances in 2024, lol.
1
My only addition to the excellent column is the role of Trump’s family in the administration. Trump faced the inevitable dilemmas of any outsider achieving office: who do you trust and who can you rely on to implement your agenda, assuming you have one? (Jessie Ventura had similar problems when he became governor of Minnesota.) Trump clearly relied heavily on his family for advice, which I think backfired badly in the case of Jared and Ivanka Kushner. I was less than heartbroken when Trump “lost” because I feared that he would spend his second administration promoting the political ambitions of the Kushners, Don, Jr. and Eric. We’ve had enough recent family dynasties in American politics.
2
“the only reform possible is replacement, which requires a rejection of both liberalism and democracy as anything more than expedients. Real reform begins with the rejection of the system and its moral framework.”
The expedient nature of democracy is that it allowed the plebians a say (real or pretend) in the system. Between the Wuahn Flu tyranny and the elimination of free and open elections, this formerly mild mannered plebian has no choice but to reject the system.
My sons are slaves, forced to wear submission sacks in order to a attend their private school. If they do not, men with guns will come and forcibly close their school.
Chicago and Cook county “elections” brook no dissent. Goodfellas quote, “$#@! you, pay me.”
The problem is, the appearance of free elections kept this wage slave passive. Chilling and grilling.
No more.
New church, new real life networks, range time, buying bulk ammo… the Moe Nonmame from three years ago is like a totally different person.
I’ve said it before: this stinks. I liked living in a 1st world country where my children had a future to look forward to.
9
I concur. And the March to degeneracy is accelerating, which necessitates the immediate destruction LD.
Yes: despite Trump’s many flaws and failures, his overall effect on the political system turned out to be a good one. Seeing him as an outsider made it easier for American voters to see themselves that way, and to imagine an alternative to the current corrupt and inbred system; even if Trump ultimately failed to provide that alternative.
I suspect that prior to Trump’s declaring his candidacy, many of us had only a vague idea of the Trump brand; I know that was the case with me. If you’re not familiar with the NYC real estate market, and don’t watch ‘reality TV’, the Trump brand seen from afar just looked like a successful form of self-aggrandizement, but with little actual content except “look at me!” Celebrity as the ultimate sign of value: “I’m famous, so I must be important”.
Running for President, Trump’s ‘genius’ was in realizing what non-lefty American voters wanted to hear; realizing the extent to which those people felt that no one on the current political scene was representing them; and successfully pretending to share those beliefs and values.
Trump fooled a lot of people into believing that he actually was a strong 2nd Amendment advocate, a foe of current immigration policy, the man who would bring our troops home and clean up the DC swamp. Only after he was elected did he say and do things that made his erstwhile supporters realize that he was just saying what he needed to say to get himself elected; that the only principle he truly embraced was that of keeping his brand in the public eye. And he was really good at that: as soon as his current controversy started to fade, he’d say something else so outrageous that the Media would have no choice but to cover it; putting Trump back in the spotlight.
But false as he turned out to be, he did energize the populist base that got him elected. That much we can thank him for.
And seeing his opponents steal the recent election has hopefully clued a lot of folks in to the fact that ‘working through the system’ to effect change is no longer possible; since the system itself is rigged to produce the result our overlords want.
4
I criticize Trump harshly for all the usual reasons and then some. But there is something to be said about his confidence, charisma etc. All the insults in the world simply bounced off him, he hardly ever even had to swat at them. If you could bottle that up and sell it, I’m sure Trump would have slapped the Trump logo on it and done it years ago (and no, what he had was much more than just sniffing a few lines of coke).
I think the DR shared that brashness and braggadocio for about a yearlong window. It was a great feeling. I never had much faith in the guy, but I remember the morning when he won, I went to the coffee shop before work. As stupid as it seems now, I must have had a spring in my step. I noticed it in my peers too. You could sense it, like a change in the air. A guy was waving a giant American flag on the overpass on the way to work, and guys were beeping their horns as they drove by.
Of course all of that has vanished, and we’re still suffering from the comedown. If nothing else Trump gave us that experience, that feeling, that mode of being– we know what it is, and perhaps at some point we can get it back more concentrated and purposeful this time.
6
I agree: his confidence and unapologetic self-assurance was infectious. I suspect we’d all like to be a little more like that.
Also refreshing: his speaking without the usual filters politicians use to parse their words and make sure nothing they said offended anyone. By contrast, Trump speaking out what was on his mind without filtering it was refreshing.
Even when what he said didn’t make a lot of sense, or contradicted what he’d said the week before, or was outright false; it was nice to see a politician saying what was on his mind without censoring himself.
Bill:
Re Trump and the media: While there can be no doubt that he truly enjoyed the spotlight, I also think that he was constantly at work to keep them off balance. They’d no sooner get their new talking points issued to them and start hooting those new points back and forth to each other, trying to build the usually effective howler monkey chorus of noise, than he’d put out something else ‘outrageous’, throwing them off their game. Previous GOPe, (GWB = best example) would respond as though the media’s script actually deserved an answer. Usually they ended up caving in to it.
It was really amusing to watch their outraged flouncing around. And, it seemed that, though they thought themselves the smart ones, they never broke the code. So the Cloud had to bring the Tech Titans out into the daylight at the end. Ripped off yet another mask, it did.
Trump could have been the Reagan he himself wanted to be and the system could have prospered under him but we are too far gone now. The harpy feminists, sexual perverts and butt hurt blacks all guided by the neurotic usual suspects has given us a “ democracy “ that will no longer tolerate white males with any self respect and testosterone.
Men like Desantis of Florida could get the system back on track for another short period of looting but I just don’t see Desantis or Hawley types saving the day.
Another election cycle or two of open borders and low birth rates for whites and it’s over anyway.
We have to look for answers outside this system.
4
I don’t see any evidence that Trump wanted to follow in Reagan’s footsteps; or that Trump shared any of the conservative principles that Reagan espoused.
If Trump had tried and failed to keep his campaign promises— to build the wall, bring our troops home, drain the DC swamp, protect our 2nd Amendment rights, send back the illegals and the ‘dreamers’, end the great replacement of legacy Americans by ‘minorities of color’— then we could blame his failures on his opposition. But how much did he really try?
I see no evidence that Trump really holds the beliefs and principles he pretended to when he ran for President. I think he just knew what he needed to say in order to get elected.
I think Trump did look at Reagan as an example of a popular President that he himself admired in his youth. As for policy No Trump was not Reaganesque. Trump just wanted to succeed using whatever policy or deal he could get done.
That’s another lesson of the Trump time. The party could have gotten just about anything from Trump in exchange for some small tokens like the wall. They were too dysfunctional to take yes for an answer. It will only get worse once the geezers drop dead. The next group of party leaders are a blend of diversity and stupidity.
2
Z: 5.10.21: “This happens with other things like pithy phrases. Back in the Obama years, someone used the term “crony-capitalism” to describe the tightening bonds between global corporations and the government. The phrase caught on and was in the mouth of every right-wing pundit. In time it sounded like some of them had a form of Tourette’s, in which they burped out that phrase uncontrollably. Today we have “deep state” and “globalist” getting the same treatment from the same crowd.”
Not sure what the point of this paragraph was except maybe to swipe at Right pundits for getting woke and helping to wake others.
Good phrases become cliche and eventually fall away. Great phrases stick around and become just what you call something. Their use in quick discourse means they’ll never and *should* never be dispensed with. Chad & Stacy haven’t the mind or time to conceptualize their random intuitions. Serve them a simple plate of “deep state” and “globo-homo” and suddenly they get it. They’ve got a lens now. If one gets sick of Rush & Tucker repeating “crony-capitalism”, too bad. It’s perfection and it works.
Besides, let’s face it. Unless you’re an oratorically gifted Jon Bowden type, most of us rely on cliche to express any idea more complex than “I like it”.
Sadly, as we know, we’ve nearly lost one of the best words ever. Gay. (I’m not 97 so I’m not lamenting the loss of happy “gay”). But the other Gay. A brilliant blend of “stupid ass, fake, corny, and punchable”. Besides its blunt efficacy, it’s got a certain descriptive essence that will never allow it to die. They may as well try and kill off the word Love.
My guess is that the mean Gay roars back with a vengeance around 2052. When the cool kids rebel against their parents’ and grandparents’ pussified speech codes.
It’s the minor cliches that annoy and could use updating. A cliche such as, “Threw him under the bus.” With a few tweaks it could be switched up. On a per-use basis even. Granted, from a cinematic angle there will never be a better replacement for the bus under which I’ve thrown you. But we’ve got to move forward as individuals.
Other cliches are forever repeated and technically stupid, yet forgivable. One such is when sportscasters yell “Unbelievable!” after a great play. We should all learn to live with it. Don’t be the guy at the bar who gripes about it. “Monkey caught a football with one hand. What’s not to believe?” (That’ll get you thrown out of your favorite establishment. Trust me.) Just lay low and let it go. “Unbelievable!” has passed from cliché into tradition. It is what it is…
Z set himself up for it so…with respect. There’s GOT to a replacement for your threadbare “men in sundresses”. It cannot be topped for fluidity and image. But it’s time to move on. You’re the freakin’ phrase wizard. Give it a shot.
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