He Fights

[Right_in_Virginia]

He Fights
Townhall, Jul 13, 2017, Evan Sayet

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum.  They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”  Here’s my answer:

We Right-thinking people have tried dignity.  There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.  We tried statesmanship.  Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?  We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?  And the results were always the same.

This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

***

The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today.

The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.

With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War.

During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”


More: https://townhall.com/columnists/evansayet/2017/07/13/he-fights-n2354580

[INVAR]

He Fights.

No.

He Tweets.

He engages in juvenile insults with media slights.

He is no warrior.

There is no 'fight' from him to repeal ObamaCare.  Just a push to sign something, anything the GOP can try and shove through to take ownership of ObamaCare and pave the way to Single Payer by putting bandaids on the pain and printing more money to bail out the exchanges.

He'll fight via tweet storm  to sign anything that he can declare a 'win'.

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

No.

He Tweets.

He engages in juvenile insults with media slights.

He is no warrior.

There is no 'fight' from him to repeal ObamaCare.  Just a push to sign something, anything the GOP can try and shove through to take ownership of ObamaCare and pave the way to Single Payer by putting bandaids on the pain and printing more money to bail out the exchanges.

He'll fight via tweet storm  to sign anything that he can declare a 'win'.

And yet, his approach took out probably the best candidate I've ever hoped to vote for.  I don't care for the man or his methods, but they did work.

[I've just "defended" Trump in  two straight posts.  I think I need another drink and a shower at the same time]

[alicewonders]

He Fights
Townhall, Jul 13, 2017, Evan Sayet

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum.  They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”  Here’s my answer:

We Right-thinking people have tried dignity.  There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.  We tried statesmanship.  Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?  We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?  And the results were always the same.

This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

***

The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today.

The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.

With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War.

During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”


More: https://townhall.com/columnists/evansayet/2017/07/13/he-fights-n2354580

Good post RiV, thanks!   

[RoosGirl]

To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale.

It's become pretty clear that many "conservatives" hold nothing sacred and nothing is beyond the pale.

I get it, he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times.  I don’t care.

See? 

I guess it's impossible to fight the liberal agenda without calling people losers and talking about women bleeding.  How absurd to try to get me to believe that in order to fight the liberal agenda we must be vulgar, crude and undignified.

[INVAR]

It's become pretty clear that many "conservatives" hold nothing sacred and nothing is beyond the pale.

See? 

I guess it's impossible to fight the liberal agenda without calling people losers and talking about women bleeding.  How absurd to try to get me to believe that in order to fight the liberal agenda we must be vulgar, crude and undignified.

The thinking is that in order to defeat the enemy, we must become more savage, more brutal and adopt their tactics to use it against them.  Anything and everything goes.

And all sides adopt this view.

This is nothing new.

This is always what happens when civil societies are in the midst of their last gasps, and horror is at the doorstep before a country is consumed by a brutal dictatorship or outright collapse and extinction.

[Right_in_Virginia]

The thinking is that in order to defeat the enemy, we must become more savage, more brutal and adopt their tactics to use it against them.  Anything and everything goes.

And all sides adopt this view. This is nothing new. 

This is always what happens when civil societies are in the midst of their last gasps, and horror is at the doorstep before a country is consumed by a brutal dictatorship or outright collapse and extinction. 

[Right_in_Virginia]

Good post RiV, thanks!   

Thanks @alicewonders   

[Cripplecreek]

It's become pretty clear that many "conservatives" hold nothing sacred and nothing is beyond the pale.

See? 

I guess it's impossible to fight the liberal agenda without calling people losers and talking about women bleeding.  How absurd to try to get me to believe that in order to fight the liberal agenda we must be vulgar, crude and undignified.

Much better men fought and won wars with greater civility and respect for the enemy than than Trump shows for our own citizens.

George Washington's rules of civility and decent behavior.

Richard Brookhiser, in his book on Washington wrote that "all modern manners in the western world were originally aristocratic. Courtesy meant behavior appropriate to a court; chivalry comes from chevalier – a knight. Yet Washington was to dedicate himself to freeing America from a court's control. Could manners survive the operation? Without realizing it, the Jesuits who wrote them, and the young man who copied them, were outlining and absorbing a system of courtesy appropriate to equals and near-equals. When the company for whom the decent behavior was to be performed expanded to the nation, Washington was ready. Parson Weems got this right, when he wrote that it was 'no wonder every body honoured him who honoured every body.'"

http://www.foundationsmag.com/civility.html

[skeeter]

The thinking is that in order to defeat the enemy, we must become more savage, more brutal and adopt their tactics to use it against them.  Anything and everything goes.

And all sides adopt this view.

This is nothing new.

This is always what happens when civil societies are in the midst of their last gasps, and horror is at the doorstep before a country is consumed by a brutal dictatorship or outright collapse and extinction.

You need to read up on the Sons of Liberty and the tactics they adapted.

[Right_in_Virginia]

You need to read up on the Sons of Liberty and the tactics they adapted.

 :thumbsup3:

[endicom]

Find out what he's not drinking and take it from the rest.

[RoosGirl]

You need to read up on the Sons of Liberty and the tactics they adapted.

Yep, "No taxation without representation" is almost exactly the same as wishing "losers" a happy Memorial Day and letting all thd "losers" know about his high IQ on Twitter.

[corbe]

  Whatever he's doing, it doesn't seem to be working all that well...JS

Trump's net approval rating is worse than Nixon's during Watergate
June 5, 2017

President Trump's Gallup daily approval rating on Sunday was just 36 percent, even worse than former President Richard Nixon's rating of 39 percent in July 1973, when he refused to turn over the infamous White House tapes. Nixon's approval rating didn't hit a low of 36 percent until mid-August, as the Watergate scandal heightened, and at that point he only had a net differential of minus-18, The New York Times reports.

As of Sunday, Trump's differential was actually even steeper than Nixon's, at minus-22:

<..snip..>

Trump's approval rating hasn't been higher than 43 percent since April 28. At 36 percent, he is just one point away from his lowest job approval rating ever, 35 percent, which he hit March 28.

At this same point in their respective presidencies, President Barack Obama was tracking at an approval rating of 61 percent, President George W. Bush at 55 percent, and Bill Clinton at 37 percent, CNN reports. —Jeva Lange

http://theweek.com/speedreads/703433/trumps-net-approval-rating-worse-than-nixons-during-watergate

[skeeter]

Yep, "No taxation without representation" is almost exactly the same as wishing "losers" a happy Memorial Day and letting all thd "losers" know about his high IQ on Twitter.

And calling people "losers" is almost exactly the same as tar & feathering and burning the governor's mansion.

You need a little remedial history too.

[INVAR]

You need to read up on the Sons of Liberty and the tactics they adapted.

Thank you for making my point.

When the Sons of Liberty began in secret in the 1760s to protest the Stamp Act, the Colonies at that point as being a part of the whole British Empire was doomed.  It would simply take ten years of incitement, stirring up the populace against the king and parliament with acts of brutality before war began in earnest.  The goal was liberty and independence from a government that they said no longer had moral authority over a God-fearing and free people.

We are no longer a God-fearing people, and we certainly cannot even agree on the definition of liberty or why we should have it other than to do what we please without any consequences.  We are fighting over which ruler is going to save us from the rest of our population.

If people want to aspire to the tactics of the Sons of Liberty against their fellow citizens who no longer stand on a common foundation, then the civil society as established as a consequence of winning our independence is doomed and finished.  What they would be advocating is no less than what the Blackshirts or Brownshirts did in Europe in the 1920's and 30's, or even the upheavals stoked by Robespierre during the Terror in France. That is what the zeitgeist will earn, not some kind of noble restoration to what the Founders established.  This people do not want that, and the ones who do are in a tiny minority.

By all means, if they want a bloodbath - and a police state followed by an iron fist from on high to keep order and ration movement and provision, then aspiring to the kinds of incitement to violence against other citizens who do not share their political views or stoke their enemies' desire to do the same is a surefire method to kickstart a conflagration of revenge and payback horror. 

I just hope people have counted the cost of what they will ignite.  Because it will not be some kind of romantic return to liberty they will obtain.   We haven't even begun to truly feel the consequences of the crushing government debt and debauchery of this society yet.  But stoking the populace to hate one another now, will make the conflagration that is coming when the laws of economics are visited, that much larger a bloodbath.

But this is what some people want apparently.

And the rest... probably don't think such a thing can possibly happen here, even though the historical evidence and the writings from the Founders more than warn us of that inevitability.

[Cripplecreek]

Thank you for making my point.

When the Sons of Liberty began in secret in the 1760s to protest the Stamp Act, the Colonies at that point as being a part of the whole British Empire was doomed.  It would simply take ten years of incitement, stirring up the populace against the king and parliament with acts of brutality before war began in earnest.  The goal was liberty and independence from a government that they said no longer had moral authority over a God-fearing and free people.

We are no longer a God-fearing people, and we certainly cannot even agree on the definition of liberty or why we should have it other than to do what we please without any consequences.  We are fighting over which ruler is going to save us from the rest of our population.

If people want to aspire to the tactics of the Sons of Liberty against their fellow citizens who no longer stand on a common foundation, then the civil society as established as a consequence of winning our independence is doomed and finished.  What they would be advocating is no less than what the Blackshirts or Brownshirts did in Europe in the 1920's and 30's, or even the upheavals stoked by Robespierre during the Terror in France. That is what the zeitgeist will earn, not some kind of noble restoration to what the Founders established.  This people do not want that, and the ones who do are in a tiny minority.

By all means, if they want a bloodbath - and a police state followed by an iron fist from on high to keep order and ration movement and provision, then aspiring to the kinds of incitement to violence against other citizens who do not share their political views or stoke their enemies' desire to do the same is a surefire method to kickstart a conflagration of revenge and payback horror. 

I just hope people have counted the cost of what they will ignite.  Because it will not be some kind of romantic return to liberty they will obtain.   We haven't even begun to truly feel the consequences of the crushing government debt and debauchery of this society yet.  But stoking the populace to hate one another now, will make the conflagration that is coming when the laws of economics are visited, that much larger a bloodbath.

But this is what some people want apparently.

And the rest... probably don't think such a thing can possibly happen here, even though the historical evidence and the writings from the Founders more than warn us of that inevitability.

Absolutely correct. The lust for power is not the same as a desire for freedom and those comparing themselves to the sons of liberty are fooling themselves if they believe their glorious revolution will bring about freedom because freedom isn't what they really want. What they want is power and control.

These modern "sons of liberty" would happily hang the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and others for treason. They were men who sought freedom and self determination for all men while these modern "SOLs" seek the power to determine what others think and do.

As far as their glorious revolution is concerned, I think the chairborne rangers have about 5% chance of their brand of victory. I used to believe otherwise but after 20 years of watching the great right wing "revolutionaries" getting older, angrier, and fatter, I know better. Who will fight their great revolution if they're home wheezing away trying to till a garden (assuming the war isn't in their back yard). Who will fight their war if they're dying of a heart attack in the woods from trying to cut firewood with an axe and hand saw? Who will fight the war while they lay dying in a coma because they didn't get their Insulin? And before they go off to fight their great war against wrongthought they better say their goodbys to loved ones who rely on life preserving and saving medical technologies and drugs. When they return they will find a lot of graves.

[TomSea]

Trump definitely has been the most pro-life President since Roe V. Wade was ruled on, possibly in the history of the United States.  Can't ask for more oh, but maybe some Senator who has done nothing is the answer.

Somewhere I missed where the sanctity of life was not a Conservative value and we defend the Southern Poverty Law Center.

[TomSea]

 :thumbsup3:

Trump;

Christian values defended, pro-choicers shut down.

[TomSea]

Oh goody, goody, the GOP should run Miss Manners; then no one will be offended.   

[TomSea]

I guess General Patton wouldn't have been welcomed by some, he wasn't polished enough.

[INVAR]

I guess General Patton wouldn't have been welcomed by some, he wasn't polished enough.

Ahhh, so you see this as a real war requiring a general who will command the slaughter of the enemy without mercy until he obtains their unconditional surrender eh?

And you keep crowing on about the death of the unborn.

You make me laugh.

[skeeter]

Thank you for making my point.

When the Sons of Liberty began in secret in the 1760s to protest the Stamp Act, the Colonies at that point as being a part of the whole British Empire was doomed...

Clever, but you know damn well the point I was making.

We have seen "savage" politics in this country, at its very outset. They were, in fact, probably very necessary at the time.

[Oceander]

He's not a particularly good fighter.  Mostly he's been damaging himself.

[skeeter]

He's not a particularly good fighter.  Mostly he's been damaging himself.

I'm not commenting on the quality of Trump's tactics. I'm not even saying that this is his intention,  (I think he's a showman first who is in the process of growing a political philosophy).

I'm saying that when the system of government has been noodled and processed to the point it becomes isolated and unresponsive to the voters, in order to be effective perhaps political etiquette, or at least what was deemed politically apropos, may have to go out the window.