Trump: A Bogeyman or Just a Man?

[Geee]

National Review:

Trump is crude and politically clueless, but no more so than the Clintons, Sanders — or Obama.

Donald J. Trump thus far has not shown that he has the level-headedness to be president. He has no political ideology and could just as well govern to the left of Hillary Clinton as to the right of her. Yet his sloppy way of speaking has earned him equally sloppy, over-the-top analogies — to Mussolini, Hitler, George Wallace, and a host of other populist and racist demagogues.

But is he uniquely dangerous, ignorant, or cruel in terms of either distant or recent American presidential history?

I don’t think so.

 

There are many ways to assess Trump. The debates and rallies give us glimpses of his ill-preparedness (at least in comparison to his rivals). So far his vision has not transcended banalities and generalities. He seems to have no team of respected advisers, at least not yet. Indeed, at this point, advising Trump apparently would be a career-killer in the Boston–New York–Washington corridor. No one quite knows who talks to him on foreign policy. He is an empty slate onto which millions write their hopes and dreams, as “Make America great again” channels the empty “Hope and Change.”

[Valin]

@Geee

Divisive Rhetoric? Trump Didn’t Start This Fire
Heather Mac Donald
March 15, 2016

Commentators on MSNBC and CNN have been shedding crocodile tears over Donald Trump’s “divisive rhetoric” and lamenting his failure to unify the country. This sudden concern for national unity is rather hard to take from the same worthies who have incessantly glorified the Black Lives Matter movement over the last year and a half.

 

Let’s dip into the rhetoric of a garden-variety Black Lives Matter march that I observed last November on Fifth Avenue in New York City. It featured “F**k the Police,” “Murderer Cops,” and “Racism Is the Disease, Revolution Is the Cure” T-shirts, “Stop Police Terror” signs, and “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Racist Cops Have Got to Go” chants.

 

What about the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter leaders? Last October, DeRay Mckesson, one of the self-appointed spokesmen for Black Lives Matter, led a seminar at the Yale Divinity School, while his BLM ally, Johnetta Elzie (ShordeeDooWhop), tweeted about the proceedings. Mckesson (now running for mayor of Baltimore) had assigned an essay, “In Defense of Looting,” which justified the August 2014 Ferguson riots as “getting straight to the heart of the problem of the police, property, and white supremacy.” Elzie’s tweeted reporting on the class included “If you put me in a cage you’re damn right I’m going to break some glass” and “Looting for me isn’t violent, it’s an expression of anger.” (Let’s hope Baltimore residents do their homework before voting.)

 

How about presidential rhetoric? President Obama routinely claims that the police and the criminal-justice system treat blacks differently than whites — an allegation without any empirical support. Last October, he defended the Black Lives Matter movement on the ground that “there is a specific problem that is happening in the African-American community that is not happening in other communities.” And might that “specific problem” be drive-by shootings, which happen virtually exclusively in black communities, mowing down innocent children and drawing disproportionate police presence? Of course not. Obama was referring to the alleged problem of racist cops’ mowing down black men. In fact, a police officer is two and a half times more likely to be killed by a black man than a black man is to be killed by a police officer. Blacks make up a lower percentage of victims of police shootings — 26 percent — than their astronomical violent-crime rates would predict. And the percentage of white and Hispanic homicide deaths from police shootings (12 percent) is much higher than the percentage of black homicide deaths from cop gunfire (4 percent).

 

(Snip)

 

 

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While both true, it should be noted (strongly) neither has he do anything to tamp down the fire.

 

"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

A Lincoln

 

Can anyone imagine DT saying anything like this? IMO he appeals to the worse angels of our nature....not the better.

[nickydog]

True, DT is no A. Lincoln. But I was surprised to read such a sensible article from VDH. It calmed me down somewhat. Not that VDH isn't always sensible and well balanced, but what he has written about other politicians were things we need to be reminded of. It's too bad we don't always choose the best people, but probably the best people don't very often go into politics.

[Valin]

@nickydog

 

2 things concern me about a Trump Presidency 1. He won't come anywhere near fulfilling his campaign rhetoric...ie. "We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with the winning," 2. He'll fundamentally change this country...ie. a rightwing Barack Obama.

 

Ok he is not the reincarnation of Hitler, but IMO he does have the mindset of a Mussolini, minus the ideology.

 

The Clintons and DT are similar in one way, neither one really believes in anything, other than getting power. And they will both say anything to get it.

[Draggingtree]

@nickydog

 

2 things concern me about a Trump Presidency 1. He won't come anywhere near fulfilling his campaign rhetoric...ie. "We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with the winning," 2. He'll fundamentally change this country...ie. a rightwing Barack Obama.

 

Ok he is not the reincarnation of Hitler, but IMO he does have the mindset of a Mussolini, minus the ideology.

 

The Clintons and DT are similar in one way, neither one really believes in anything, other than getting power. And they will both say anything to get it.

Only two things consern you bout Trump, Your lucky

[Valin]

 

@nickydog

 

2 things concern me about a Trump Presidency 1. He won't come anywhere near fulfilling his campaign rhetoric...ie. "We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with the winning," 2. He'll fundamentally change this country...ie. a rightwing Barack Obama.

 

Ok he is not the reincarnation of Hitler, but IMO he does have the mindset of a Mussolini, minus the ideology.

 

The Clintons and DT are similar in one way, neither one really believes in anything, other than getting power. And they will both say anything to get it.

Only two things consern you bout Trump, Your lucky

 

 

 

Mr. Optimist...that's me!

[Geee]

@Draggingtree @Valin @nickydog Found this link on Drudge this morning and found it soon strange that somehow they thought it was complimentary?

 

 

A King in His Castle: How Donald Trump Lives, From His Longtime Butler

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/us/politics/donald-trump-butler-mar-a-lago.html

 

 

Another thing that struck me about it is that until the recent politicians - every one of the friends and guests that he mentions is a liberal.

[Valin]

@Geee

 

 

Just A Regular Joe.