Posted on 07/18/2017 4:33:04 AM PDT by Taxman
He Fights!
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.
I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party. I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”
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.”
General George Patton was a vulgar-talking, son-of-a-bitch. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum, then Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich.
Trump is fighting. And what’s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel’s, he’s shouting, “You magnificent bastards, I read your book!” That is just the icing on the cake, but it’s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he’s defeating the Left using their own tactics.
That book is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – a book so essential to the Liberals’ war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis. It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.
Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do.
First, instead of going after “the fake media” – and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri – Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal. Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.”
Everyone gets that it’s not just CNN – in fact, in a world where Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof are people of influence and whose “reporting” is in no way significantly different than CNN’s – CNN is just a piker.
Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. With Trump’s ability to go around them, they cannot simply stand pat. They need to respond. This leaves them with only two choices. They can either “go high” (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery.
The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive.
Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s, church. Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.
This makes “going high” a non-starter for CNN. This leaves them no other option but to ratchet up the fake news, conjuring up the next “nothing burger” and devoting 24 hours a day to hysterical rants about how it’s “worse than Nixon.”
This, obviously, is what CNN has chosen to do. The problem is that, as they become more and more hysterical, they become more and more obvious. Each new effort at even faker news than before and faker “outrage” only makes that much more clear to any objective observer that Trump is and always has been right about the fake news media.
And, by causing their hysteria, Trump has forced them into numerous, highly embarrassing and discrediting mistakes. Thus, in their desperation, they have lowered their standards even further and run with articles so clearly fake that, even with the liberal (lower case “l”) libel laws protecting the media, they’ve had to wholly retract and erase their stories repeatedly.
Their flailing at Trump has even seen them cross the line into criminality, with CNN using their vast corporate fortune to hunt down a private citizen for having made fun of them in an Internet meme. This threat to “dox” – release of personal information to encourage co-ideologists to visit violence upon him and his family -- a political satirist was chilling in that it clearly wasn’t meant just for him. If it were, there would have been no reason for CNN to have made their “deal” with him public.
Instead, CNN – playing by “Chicago Rules” – was sending a message to any and all: dissent will not be tolerated. This heavy-handed and hysterical response to a joke on the Internet has backfired on CNN, giving rise to only more righteous ridicule.
So, to my friends on the Left – and the #NeverTrumpers as well -- do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and “dignified” and “proper”? Of course I do. These aren’t those times. This is war. And it’s a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years.
So, say anything you want about this president – I get it, he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don’t care. I can’t spare this man. He fights.
Evan Sayet is the author of The KinderGarden of Eden: How The Modern Liberal Thinks. His lecture to the Heritage Foundation on this same topic remains, some ten years later, by far the single most viewed lecture in their history. Evan can be reached at contactevansayet@gmail.com
"Donald Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War."
Freaking awesome column. So good. Thank you for posting.
Duplicate.
When you are in a street brawl, such niceties as the Marquis of Queensbury rules are thrown aside, and the rules of engagement are whatever gets the other guy down on the ground where he can get the pounding he deserves.
Or until the other guy develops enough of a sense of self-preservation to run away.
Smash-mouth, brass-knuckled, take-no-prisoners, last man standing almost always wins the fight under this doctrine.
Bump
Right on
‘Freaking awesome column. So good. Thank you for posting.’
+1
Grant was not a drunk. Too bad the author couldn’t do a little research before repeating old slanders.
This is simply one of the best columns that I have ever read, period. It succinctly puts into artfully drawn words that which I have been thinking for the last 2 years about Trump, and for the last couple of decades about the personality of “The One” that we need to fight the Leftists (NOT liberals, folks, LEFTISTS!). We have needed a fighter for a long time (at least since somewhere mid-way through Reagan’s 2nd term), and we finally have him.
I, for one, will be emailing this to everyone that I know (I don’t do Fakebook...but maybe some of those that I send it to will post it there). THIS NEEDS TO GO VIRAL - go forth and make it happen.
Best article I’ve read on Trump.
Questions for NeverTrumpers:
1) What has Trump done that isn’t conservative?
2) Prior to Trump, who fought for a wall, wanted to address trade, and opposed foreign intervention amidst fierce opposition?
3) Prior to Trump, who fought liberalism and cultural decline publicly and loudly?
4) Prior to Trump, who called out Fake News?
5) Prior to Trump, who fought to keep their campaign promises?
The ‘lack of decorum’ argument is a non-starter considering the track record of politicians. And those clutching their pearls over it do not care about the larger issues. The left has been promoting cultural decay for 30 years with no pushback, which is a REAL reason to clutch your pearls.
As a former liberal I have been saying this for years. You don’t engage liberals, you smash their teeth-literally. Then the realize you ain’t f’ing around!
Thanks for the comeback! All good questions!
Plus, we need to increase the “heat in the Republican House and Senate kitchen!” Those critters need to get on board the Trump Train!
I was sincerely hoping that this thread would get more attention.
This essay deserves widest dissemination. Let us ping it to death!
I concur — that is precisely why I posted it!
Let’s ping it to death - needs widest dissemination!
Yes, “This is simply one of the best columns that I have ever read, period!”
I have already emailed this essay to everyone that I know (I don’t do Fakebook, either — cannot STAND mark Zuckerberg!)
I agree: “THIS NEEDS TO GO VIRAL - go forth and make it happen.”
The point being made in the essay I posted is that Grant was a fighter, and among the “things” he had to fight was alcohol, a fight not unknown to many of us.
HST, there is a rather fascinating article about Grant at http://www.historynet.com/ulysses-s-grants-lifelong-struggle-with-alcohol.htm. Perhaps you might enjoy reading it.
Grant appears to have, for the most part, kept his affinity for alcohol under control.
You are most welcome.
Let us give the essay widest dissemination!
FIGHT ON!
Of what?
In this fight, there are no rules!
WE MUST HELP PRESIDENT TRUMP WIN!
TRUMP WINS, WE WIN!
MAGA!
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