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Was Trump Our Captain Queeg?
American Greatness ^ | 27 Nov, 2022 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 11/28/2022 5:40:58 AM PST by MtnClimber

And will the NeverTrumpers finally be exposed to have been as contemptible as the NeverQueegers were in The Caine Mutiny?

The Left, the NeverTrump Right, and many independents are tiring of Donald Trump’s recitations of prior, however justified, grievances at the hands of the media, the Democratic Party, the administrative state, and hard-core Left.

The conventional wisdom runs that Trump’s whines and victimization recitations reveal deep paranoias, and increasingly to an obsessive degree. We are told that his near neurotic obsessions with the unfairness of his critics are alienating the independent voter, who finds Trump’s strolls down 2020-21 memory lane the same-old, same-old ad nauseam.

True, Trump’s occasional recklessness contributed to many of his misadventures. At least at some point, friendly critics suggest, he might have realized that his nationalist/populist agenda, his orphaned outsider status, his lack of prior political experience, and his estrangement from the Republican political hierarchy, bipartisan Washington, D.C. media and government fixtures gave him no margin of error—despite what prior presidents and our current commander-in-chief have been accorded.

The haters would have hated Trump regardless, But his tweets and ad hominem retorts served to disguise their peremptory venom while instead highlighting his own retaliatory crudity.

“Fact-checkers” doted on every Trump statement, nitpicking them to find some exaggeration, or untruth. Fine. But then these same hypercritics simply went comatose during the Biden Administration, with little care that Biden spins fantasies daily, from a son lost in the Iraq War to insulting claims that he passed his student loan amnesty in the Congress by a close vote, and on and on. With Trump, voters got real achievement with coarseness, with Biden utter failure with near senility.

The media lied about supposed felonious behavior of the two Trump sons during the Russian collusion mania.

(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: nevertrumpers
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To: rlmorel

Excellent summary.

Worth reading slowly!


41 posted on 11/28/2022 10:22:49 AM PST by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: Varsity Flight

This.


42 posted on 11/28/2022 10:25:13 AM PST by kiryandil (put yer vote in the box, chump. HARHARHARHAR)
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To: rlmorel

You should read the book. Queeg was a jerk.


43 posted on 11/28/2022 10:28:48 AM PST by Vermont Lt
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To: MtnClimber

VDH can be a real lunk head. This is one of those times.


44 posted on 11/28/2022 10:34:58 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: MtnClimber

VDH flop.


45 posted on 11/28/2022 10:35:11 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: Theoria; Chgogal
chgogal posted:

Which POTUS was as successful as Trump? Look at what Trump accomplished:

  1. Gas price per gallon was about $2.30;
  2. Inflation about 1.4%, mortgage rates were half of what they are now;
  3. Unemployment was low before Covid and before Blue Governors shut everything down and we were in the midst of a V-shape recovery until January 22, 2021;
  4. Tax decrease; tax laws promoted small businesses as well as large;
  5. US enjoyed energy independence - No Green Agenda, no war on energy, No Paris Treaty;
  6. No war in Ukraine, no threat of nuclear war, NATO paid its way;
  7. China was quiet and we were winning the trade war;
  8. US companies were bringing home the jobs due to well executed tax treatments;
  9. Peace in the Middle East aka Abraham Accords; US Embassy moved to Jerusalem; and Iran was isolated.
  10. Got three non-left “I don't know what a woman is” Supreme Court Justices on the bench allowing Roe vs Wade to be overturned.

Who the heck can accomplish the above in four years while being impeached twice and investigated by Obama's Weaponized Agencies?

46 posted on 11/28/2022 10:36:02 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: Fresh Wind

JFK needed that like he needed another hole in his head.


47 posted on 11/28/2022 10:37:07 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: rlmorel
Furthermore, those politicians in the Republican Party, Collins, Murkowski, McConnell, Graham, and most egregiously, Romney, and McCain, are deserving of every malediction we can heap on them.

We must NEVER forget that McCain, and after he went to hell, his people - DELIBERATELY gave the Democrats TWO US Senate seats in Arizona.

And it looks like that is in perpetuity.

48 posted on 11/28/2022 10:37:15 AM PST by kiryandil (put yer vote in the box, chump. HARHARHARHAR)
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To: RoosterRedux

Oh yeah it’s style over substance BS again....


49 posted on 11/28/2022 10:38:20 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: texas booster

VDH is usually pretty good. Ths is not one of those times.


50 posted on 11/28/2022 10:39:58 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: MtnClimber
With all due respect to VDH's acumen, I would draw closer parallels between POTUS Trump and William Bligh than I would to Captain Queeg.

By most, if not all accounts, Bligh was a masterful seaman. Bligh was backstabbed by those he had appointed, and was acquitted repeatedly in multiple trials brought by pissants not worthy of shining his boots trying to discredit him.

Every time the history is re-examined, Bligh is viewed in more and more favorable light, much like I suspect Donald J. Trump will be decades and centuries from now.

51 posted on 11/28/2022 10:41:02 AM PST by Joe 6-pack
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To: rlmorel

I don’t view Trump as flawed. That’s just a meme being pushed by the RINOs, the deep state and the MSM. Given what Trump accomplished against all odds in four years I’m not seeing the flaws. Its a bunch of BS.


52 posted on 11/28/2022 10:42:40 AM PST by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped)
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To: MtnClimber

A great reasoned essay on the various assaults made on Trump as candidate and President by never=Trumpers and various formal political enemies and the Deep State.

A long read because the subject matter requires it, but so clearly outlines the details of the harassment of Trump that it should be required reading in every school and by every patriot.


53 posted on 11/28/2022 10:46:29 AM PST by wildbill (The older I get, the less the term 'life in prison" scares me)
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To: rlmorel

Great post. BTW - ignore Vermouth LT. For it is nothing more than a never-Trump troll with an acute case of pretentious moral superiority.


54 posted on 11/28/2022 10:58:29 AM PST by ohioman
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To: rlmorel

‘There are a lot of parallels in the treatment of Trump by the Republican Party and the treatment of Captain Queeg by his own crew, in particular, the officers of the USS Caine.’

to begin with, yeslthe Caine Mutiny was a remarkable movie, even though it was almost not made because the Navy refused to acknowledge even a fictitious mutiny;) and yes there could be parallels to Trump, if we look hard enough...I think Hanson’s allusion to Queeg was rearding his downfall, his obdurate belief that everyone was plotting to get him, to toss him aside, leading to that memorable scene with the strawberries(the strawberries, that’s where I had them), and the inevitable clicking of the balls in his hand, signifying his descent into unreality...

as far as the identifying the Caine officers with recalcitrant party members, yes, the duplicitous Keefer (a bang up performance by MacMurry) fits the bill, except that in politics, unlike the Navy, all things are fair game, and to think that blind faith and loyalty is a political trope is pure lunacy...I don’t think the party members you singled out for derision resemble Keefer so much as Willie Keith, who seemed happy enough to come out on whichever side he felt had the upper hand...Keefer at least had a cause (revolting as it may have been, but Keith wobbled in between adulation and repudiation of Queeg, and seeing the wounded captain, cast his lot with the despicable Keefer...all of this could have been brought out in the movie had Robert Francis not been such a limited actor (brutal seems too harsh, but truer) and for that matter, Van Johnson could have fleshed out Maryk’s character much better, he was perfecly capable of portraying a man who’s attempting to discern truth among shifting points of view and events...

whatever, it is interesting to apply fictitious occurences to true happenings, a societal mirror, so to speak, which topnotch writers like Wouk could hold up to us so we can use our brains to think more clearly...


55 posted on 11/28/2022 11:44:29 AM PST by IrishBrigade
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To: Joe 6-pack

‘Bligh was a masterful seaman.’

perhaps; if I’m not mistaken, the Bounty was his first captaincy, and this no doubt played upon his judgement...

‘Bligh was backstabbed by those he had appointed’

no; Bligh was waylaid by one commissioned officer, Fletcher Christian, and two or so midshipman...the other officers of Bligh’s contingent stuck with him, even on the longboat, a few dying from the exposure...

‘Bligh is viewed in more and more favorable light, much like I suspect Donald J. Trump will be decades and centuries from now.’

yes, if Bligh’s real life is held up to the simplistic portrayal of him by Charles Laughton (the better depiction of Bligh was by Trevor Howard in the otherwise ridiculous 1962 movie); controversy dogged him, just as it has Trump, by both duplicitous miscreants and those who thought they were in the right...


56 posted on 11/28/2022 12:19:56 PM PST by IrishBrigade
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To: central_va
So, whining in public about being attacked is "substance" but keeping your mouth shut is "style"?

That must be a new kind of politics. Does that actually get candidates elected?

57 posted on 11/28/2022 12:37:28 PM PST by RoosterRedux
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To: rlmorel

Quite an essay. Well done.

Three thoughts:

1) Nixon was treated in a similar manner as Trump.
Nixon obsessed about his low upbringing and raged against the left wing media and the Harvard commies who hated him. It was a class thing.

2) Establishment Republicans treated the Tea Party the same way that they treated MAGA. They are Vichy Republicans. They are not on our side. (I coined the phrase “Vichy Republicans in the 80s. I wish I copyrighted it.)

3) Trump deserves an opportunity to exact revenge on the deep state. He would be doing it for us. I want revenge.


58 posted on 11/28/2022 12:46:31 PM PST by DeplorablePaul ("..)
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To: Georgia Girl 2

Trump has flaws. You have them. I have them. General Patton had them, as did Grant, Lee, Churchill, Halsey, Nimitz, and Eisenhower.

We all have them. The difference in my view is the gaslighting effort by the Left to somehow exaggerate them and paint them as disabling, which they aren’t.

Trump’s performance, with all of that heaped on him, is proof positive of that.


59 posted on 11/28/2022 1:29:56 PM PST by rlmorel (Nolnah's Razor: Never attribute to incompetence that which is adequately explained by malice.)
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To: DeplorablePaul

I agree 100% with your post. Nixon was flawed in many respects as well, with the EPA, and price controls primary among them, but he was nothing like what we have seen since 1988 in the Oval Office.

Nixon was largely pilloried for his hand in getting Alger Hiss outed and punished. The Left never forgot his part in what happened to one of their communist allies.

But Nixon loved his country, much the same as I see Trump does, and in the same fashion.

Just my opinion.


60 posted on 11/28/2022 1:33:38 PM PST by rlmorel (Nolnah's Razor: Never attribute to incompetence that which is adequately explained by malice.)
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