Posted on 01/16/2017 10:21:56 AM PST by nikos1121
Dear Reader (including the good cat, which for some reason is opposed to my daughter getting an education), I should just say it clearly: I will never fall in love with Donald Trump. For most of you, this is not a big surprise. But for some, it’s a kind of betrayal.
In much the same way the Left gets furious when you just don’t care enough about its priorities, many of Trump’s biggest supporters get bizarrely angry at the fact that I am not emotionally correct when it comes to the new president.
Monsieur Google tells me that “emotional correctness” is a term that’s been used before including by — ack! — the constantly self-parodying Sally Kohn. But fortunately, I don’t mean it the way she does. In fact, I think I mean something close to the opposite.
There’s a lot of tribalism and romanticism in the water these days. By tribalism I mean the idea that loyalty to one’s side comes first and arguments come later, and when they do, they must be bent to fit the needs of one’s side. By romanticism, I mean the primacy of feelings over facts. Epistemic Closure for Thee, But Not for Me The vexing thing is that a lot of liberals agree with this observation when it’s framed as a criticism of conservatives.
That’s Obama’s whole shtick these days, decrying “bubbles” and the lack of a “common baseline of fact.” And by “these days,” I really mean his entire presidency. Obama has always argued that anyone who disagrees with him is doing so from a deficit of facts and surplus of partisanship and ideology.
Even when Elizabeth Warren disagreed with him, he resorted to this lazy arrogance. But Obama is hardly alone. This has been a theme in progressivism going back a century, from the progressive obsession with “disinterestedness” to JFK’s insistence that “political labels and ideological approaches are irrelevant to the solution” of modern challenges. “Most of the problems . . . that we now face, are technical problems, are administrative problems,” he insisted, and these problems “deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men.”
The whole ludicrous and yet somehow quaint “epistemic closure” panic of the last decade and the rise of “explanatory journalism” illustrated the extent to which liberals believe that confirmation bias is a uniquely conservative failure. Paul Krugman cut to the epistemological chase with his claim that “facts have a liberal bias.” Neil deGrasse Tyson’s fantasies of creating a utopian world called “Rationalia” is in one sense a great punchline to a joke, but it’s also a perfect example of how liberal tribalism uses scientism to discredit perspectives it doesn’t like.
Care, Damn It All of that is annoying, but it can’t hold a candle to the ugliness of emotional correctness. In recent years, we’ve seen how the real crime isn’t conservative intellectual or ideological dissent but conservative emotional dissent. Mozilla’s Brendan Eich being pelted from his job, the perfidious treason of the wedding-cake bakers, the assaults on Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A, the bonfires of asininity lit every day on college campuses: These have so much less to do with an ideological argument and more to do with the new unwritten and unspoken fatwah: “You will be made to care.” During that idiotic Halloween controversy at Yale, one student captured the moment beautifully when she complained that an administrator’s attempts to discuss, explain, and debate the issue were beside the point. “He doesn’t get it,” she wrote. “And I don’t want to debate. I want to talk about my pain.”
The truth is she didn’t just want to talk about her pain, she wanted her pain validated and even celebrated. In the Soviet Union and other totalitarian societies, displaying overt signs of “insufficient enthusiasm” is a crime: “Now, if a North Korean university professor is suspected of insufficient enthusiasm for the system, they will be gone without a trace very quickly,” Andrei Lankov has written of the Hermit Kingdom. “Even the memory of the unlucky victim would likely disappear.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/g-file/443848/donald-trump-popularity-twitter-use-how-help-trump-win
I think he's all wet, and again he can't help but tell us AGAIN, right out of the gate that He will, "never fall in love with Trump."
Even though I posted this article, I'm suggesting that you don't waste your time reading it. It's high pompous @ss writing, that leaves you with not a shread of new understanding.
My advice to NRO, "Keep underestimating, undercutting and undermining the Trump presidency before it starts. Keep looking for your ideal candidate, now that your boys Cruz and Bush lost.
I'm predicting your readership and advertising revenues will be even less one year from now.
He, Williamson and French have destroyed NR. If it wasn’t for Andrew McCarthy and Victor Davis Hanson it will now be totally unreadable.
But where would FR be without NRO? Where would we go to comment on columns we don’t read?
If he got his way during the Primaries, Hillary Clinton would be the President Elect. That is all that matters.
Why would ANYONE care what this little twerp thinks about ANYTHING? Really!
I support Trump. But I am not in love with him by any means.
Put your faith in principles, not in individuals. Individuals stray.
I agree with your assessment of both Goldberg and his latest turd. Unlike the age of Øbongo, no one is demanding that anyone “love” Trump. As a keen matter of fact I have yet to hear a single person say that disagreement with him (Trump) is due to latent racism (as was recounted several million times with Prezzy Stompyfoot) ;’}
Everyone expects Trump to be criticized and even 2nd guessed - that’s the nature of politics. The difference was that the left tried to cut off any criticism of Øbongo with the race card.
Trump will do fine because he doesn’t need any crutches.
He is a pissant
NRO can disappear, we won’t miss them.
Conservatives are not emotional. They vote on principle. Trump was the most principledin his attack on the Establishment. Cruz was a close second. Cruz is no Bush. Yoking them together is disingenuous.
He’s a troll.
True. Was referring to NRO’s picks. Cruz has, IMHO, redeemed himself. Rubio and Bush are petty jerks.
Goldberg and others are the writer versions of FOXED Me/again Kelly.
Goldberg was popular. So was Eric Erickson during his CNN years.
Some handle popularity well and others are Goldberg elitists with a hang over, hammering the public with their self righteousness and how wrong we are.
They seem to believe they should be treated as savants, when they are but prickly egotists.
“Unlike the age of Øbongo, no one is demanding that anyone “love” Trump.”
Hmmm, I am guessing you did not read many threads at FR during the past six months, or you would have encountered the credulous adulation with the demand that anyone not sharing that Trump worship be expelled.
“As a keen matter of fact I have yet to hear a single person say that disagreement with him (Trump) is due to latent racism”
In the MSM the cry is always racism, at FR it is instead frequently treason or idiocy (or Hillary worhip, which is the same thing) being the root behind any and every criticism of The Donald.
As I wrote my friend Stephen Moore, in essence, “I will join you to celebrate success when Trump fulfills his promises and pursues legality and liberty, and expect you to join me in condemnation should he betray them.”
Goldberg ran away from the Right. He will either sidle back or he will do a David Brooks and become a strident leftist n the employ of an MSM outfit as its official ConservativeDiversity asset.
Jonah, nobody is asking you to fall in love with Trump, any more than we FReepers could fall in love with Zero.
All we do ask is that you grant him the respect he deserves as your President, and do all you can to help him succeed, for when Trump succeeds, our country succeeds.
If you cannot find it in your heart to respect Trump, I can understand because I tried but could not respect Obama. However, just as I did, you can respect the Office of the Presidency.
When was Johan not a cuck? I can’t recall an issue he didn’t basically bend his knee in submission to the left over, or didn’t demand that to be properly conservative, we must limit ourselves to tactics of opposition that are well known and constantly proven to be utterly and completely useless.
Imo, he’s always been that guy hiding in his closet so he can watch the Dems screw his country.
I got about a paragraph into this apparent parody of leftist psychobabble before it just disintegrated into gibberish. I did get the vague impression that Goldberg thought it somehow helped him, so I guess it’s a defensive use of parody leftist psychobabble?
As if anyone on FR cares that he isn’t “emotionally invested” in Trump. We care than he goes out of his way to undermine him. He’s a creep and for a pompous a**hole, you’d think he’d take a bath once in a while. George Will does.
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