There are a number of issues with this article.
These are as follows:
[float=left]Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.[/float]
Trump's past behavior as well as his behavior on the campaign trail show he was an enabler of Democrats. Additionally, he's been very erratic on the campaign trail, with proposals that will destroy international trade and spark wars. In essence, Trump is a gun-runner that gave Hillary that semi-auto... and is currently wearing a suicide bomb vest. The current situation described in the article is not accurate.
That this is the second sentence in the article is a foreshadowing of the numerous problems contained within it.
[float=left]The truth is that Trump articulated, if incompletely and inconsistently, the right stances on the right issues—immigration, trade, and war—right from the beginning. [/float]
His policies are disastrous for this country. Sparking trade wars with all our major trading partners is not a "right stance". Working to create a deportation force with the authority to round up anyone they suspect to be an illegal in this nation is not a "right stance". Bragging about forcing our military to commit war crimes is not a "right stance".
Except in the minds of raving lunatics or nihilists.
[float=left]One of the paradoxes—there are so many—of conservative thought over the last decade at least is the unwillingness even to entertain the possibility that America and the West are on a trajectory toward something very bad. On the one hand, conservatives routinely present a litany of ills plaguing the body politic. Illegitimacy. Crime. Massive, expensive, intrusive, out-of-control government. Politically correct McCarthyism. Ever-higher taxes and ever-deteriorating services and infrastructure. Inability to win wars against tribal, sub-Third-World foes. A disastrously awful educational system that churns out kids who don’t know anything and, at the primary and secondary levels, can’t (or won’t) discipline disruptive punks, and at the higher levels saddles students with six figure debts for the privilege.[/float]
If the author is going to make claims, there *must* be examples to back them up. There are none given. What 'something very bad' is the author alluding to? There is no mention. He is letting the mind of the reader fill in the blank. That is not journalism, but propaganda.
Furthermore, crime is down over the last 20 years. So claiming crime would be more false propaganda.
Illegitimacy? Is that really an issue?
Politically correct McCarthyism? In colleges, yes. In government, not really. Of course, insults/jokes about ethnic groups and women are not going to be tolerated.
Furthermore, taxes are not 'ever-increasing'. They are lower than 20 years ago. The last time taxes went up was with the expiration of the tax holiday during the government shutdown of 2012. Before that, taxes were not going up. After that, taxes have not been rising.
As for winning wars, have we declared war since WWII? No. Furthermore, we are not currently fighting any national military; but what, in the past, would have been called 'partisans'. No nation has really had any good successes against such forces.
Regarding education, if it is so bad... how do you explain our doctors, surgeons, engineers, lawyers, etc, etc, etc. As stated, this is hyperbole and very inaccurate.
The only real issue is the size and cost of the government. And Trump is on-record for expanding it's spending, scope, and size.
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The author then goes on to claim that conservatives do not actually believe that 'the end is nigh'. So therefore, it's okay to toss the baby out with the bathwater. No reason given at all. And the author then goes on to base the rest of the article on an assertion that has no justification. Talk about constructing a building on no foundation!
From there, the author then rambles on about the 'alt-right':
[float=left]It’s absurd to assume that any of this would stop or slow—would do anything other than massively intensify—in a Hillary administration. It’s even more ridiculous to expect that hitherto useless conservative opposition would suddenly become effective. For two generations at least, the Left has been calling everyone to their right Nazis. This trend has accelerated exponentially in the last few years, helped along by some on the Right who really do seem to merit—and even relish—the label. There is nothing the modern conservative fears more than being called “racist,” so alt-right pocket Nazis are manna from heaven for the Left. But also wholly unnecessary: sauce for the goose. The Left was calling us Nazis long before any pro-Trumpers tweeted Holocaust denial memes. And how does one deal with a Nazi—that is, with an enemy one is convinced intends your destruction? You don’t compromise with him or leave him alone. You crush him.[/float]
This is outrageously wrong on two levels. First, while the left has called the right racist in the past, the public recognized that it was not true. As evidence, I'd offer our past electoral victories. Now, however, Trump pushed the racist, neo-Nazi meme first with his retweets from just those people. After he did so, and people perked up and noticed did the Democrats push *his own words*. This time, the electorate does see him as a racist. To say that we should just ignore the issue is suicide.
[float=left]If you haven’t noticed, our side has been losing consistently since 1988. We can win midterms, but we do nothing with them.[/float]
Which conveniently forgets the Republican congress of the 1990s, which fulfilled nearly everything on their 'Contract with America'. This is an outright lie.
[float=left]If it hadn’t been abundantly clear for the last 50 years, the campaign of 2015-2016 must surely have made it evident to even the meanest capacities that the intelligentsia—including all the organs through which it broadcasts its propaganda—is overwhelmingly partisan and biased. Against this onslaught, “conservative” media is a nullity, barely a whisper. It cannot be heard above the blaring of what has been aptly called “The Megaphone.”[/float]
No. The mainstream press has not gotten worse, but stayed the same. The author gives no justification for these statements. I would ask people to compare our press today with that of Dan Rather and his Rathergate with Bush. Can you honestly say that our press is worse... or the same?
Furthermore, our conservative media is not a nullity, but an echo chamber so loud that it's drowning out other voices to those on the right. Case in point, the 2012 elections. Our own conservative press was sure that Romney would win... and as that was all we read and listened to, so were we. A press that powerful is anything *BUT* a nullity.
[float=left]Third and most important, the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle. As does, of course, the U.S. population, which only serves to reinforce the two other causes outlined above. This is the core reason why the Left, the Democrats, and the bipartisan junta (categories distinct but very much overlapping) think they are on the cusp of a permanent victory that will forever obviate the need to pretend to respect democratic and constitutional niceties. Because they are.[/float]
This is recycled hogwash from the No-Nothing party of the mid-1800s. It wasn't true then and as human nature hasn't changed, it's not going to hold true in the future.
[float=left]It’s also why they treat open borders as the “absolute value,” the one “principle” that—when their “principles” collide—they prioritize above all the others.
Oh, right—there’s that other issue. The sacredness of mass immigration is the mystic chord that unites America’s ruling and intellectual classes. Their reasons vary somewhat. The Left and the Democrats seek ringers to form a permanent electoral majority. They, or many of them, also believe the academic-intellectual lie that America’s inherently racist and evil nature can be expiated only through ever greater “diversity.” The junta of course craves cheaper and more docile labor. It also seeks to legitimize, and deflect unwanted attention from, its wealth and power by pretending that its open borders stance is a form of noblesse oblige. The Republicans and the “conservatives”? Both of course desperately want absolution from the charge of “racism.” For the latter, this at least makes some sense. No Washington General can take the court—much less cash his check—with that epithet dancing over his head like some Satanic Spirit. But for the former, this priestly grace comes at the direct expense of their worldly interests. Do they honestly believe that the right enterprise zone or charter school policy will arouse 50.01% of our newer voters to finally reveal their “natural conservatism” at the ballot box? It hasn’t happened anywhere yet and shows no signs that it ever will. But that doesn’t stop the Republican refrain: more, more, more! No matter how many elections they lose, how many districts tip forever blue, how rarely (if ever) their immigrant vote cracks 40%, the answer is always the same. Just like Angela Merkel after yet another rape, shooting, bombing, or machete attack. More, more, more![/float]
Strawman argument. No one, except for possibly Libertarians, holds open borders as an 'absolute value'. The argument is that of how many immigrants can America assimilate at one time. Democrats think we can handle more than Republicans. Furthermore, the bulk of this is simply a polemic on immigration without, again, any proof. It's quite a breathtakingly irrational screed with no real point except for the author to say how much he *really* hates people.
For if this was true, we'd have long since gone further left. Immigrants are all leftists, according to the author. As our *ENTIRE* nation was made of immigrants from Germans to Irish to Italians to Poles to Chinese to Japanese to Indians to Vietnamese (and so on). If the author was right, all of them would never have *EVER* supported conservatism.
Which is not true. Therefore, neither is the author.
[float=left]By contrast, simply building a wall and enforcing immigration law will help enormously, by cutting off the flood of newcomers that perpetuates ethnic separatism and by incentivizing the English language and American norms in the workplace. These policies will have the added benefit of aligning the economic interests of, and (we may hope) fostering solidarity among, the working, lower middle, and middle classes of all races and ethnicities. The same can be said for Trumpian trade policies and anti-globalization instincts. Who cares if productivity numbers tick down, or if our already somnambulant GDP sinks a bit further into its pillow? Nearly all the gains of the last 20 years have accrued to the junta anyway. It would, at this point, be better for the nation to divide up more equitably a slightly smaller pie than to add one extra slice—only to ensure that it and eight of the other nine go first to the government and its rentiers, and the rest to the same four industries and 200 families.[/float]
Considering that illegal immigration from Mexico has tapered off to nearly nothing, building a wall would be extremely expensive and do nothing. That is not 'help', considering our debt and deficit.
Trade wars with our major trading partners will put a huge number of Americans out of work. It's extremely strange that the author doesn't care about that.
And I'd say that it'd be best to better divide the larger economic pie, not a significantly shrunken one. That's just foolish.
[float=left]We’ve established that most “conservative” anti-Trumpites are in the Orwellian sense objectively pro-Hillary.[/float]
No, you've only now just mentioned it! Three paragraphs from the end of this long article and you now bring this up as a 'fait-accompli'? WTF?
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In essence, this was an article from someone... containing a rambling screed with no coherent point, filled with falsehoods, outright lies, and generalizations with no proof.
It's a giant load of bullcarp designed to feed people's preconceived notions. Not to actually try and present evidence to sway people.
And I see far too much of that crud coming from the Trump side.
