The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts.

Friday, January 12, 2018

The Demolition Man

A widely-discredited book implies that Donald Trump is "unstable and insane"; that his administration is in chaos, and that the presidency and the constitution are threatened. The Democrats and their trained hamsters in the media love it, showing us their concerned faces as they predict the demise of the republic. At the same time, this "unstable and insane" leader suggests the possibility of a comprehensive immigration plan. Odd that really really, really stable and smart leaders like, uh, Barack Obama, seemed unable to achieve that. And while all of this was going on, this "unstable and insane" leader holds an important meeting with congressional leaders and looks quite presidential in doing so.

Ann Althouse comments:
“Look at him, with members of Congress arrayed around him at that table. The news media had to keep the cameras running live. After spending the last week promoting the theory that he’s stupid and crazy, the media look stupid and crazy, as he’s clearly in command, speaking coherently, behaving competently, and getting full respect from the members of Congress. This really was a perfect response the barrage of criticism that bounced off Michael Wolff’s convenient-but-fake book.”
But the Dems keep digging in a deep hole of their own making. Now there are whispers of a variety of passive aggressive "demonstrations" planned for Trump's forthcoming State of the Union address. Digging, digging and more digging.

Scott Adams characterizes Donald Trump as "The Demolition President" because in addition to achieving some rather significant accomplishments in 2017 (reducing taxes for about 80 to 90 percent of all Americans comes to mind), he has demolished much of the moral authority of the elites and the media. Adams writes:
President Trump has delivered on a number of promises for his base. But there was an impressive amount of breakage along the way. You might say he President Trump did as much demolition as he did construction. The press is doing a good job of telling us what he accomplished in 2017. But they keep leaving out all the stuff he broke that probably needed to be broken. I’ll fix that for you here.
  • GOP – Trump broke the GOP and reconstructed it along his terms, successfully it seems.
  • DNC – The DNC has no charismatic leader, no game plan, and little money.
  • Clinton Dynasty – Done
  • Bush Dynasty – Done
  • Mainstream Media – The public learned that news coverage is based on bias as much as fact.
  • NFL – Ratings down, attendance down.
  • FBI (leadership) – The FBI as a whole is still highly credible, but the leadership is not.
  • Pundits – Nearly all the pundits were wrong about Trump’s nomination, election, and successful (by Republican standards) first year.
  • Government Regulations – For good or bad, we have fewer regulations now.
  • Hollywood – Big stars are alienating 40% of their potential audience whenever they take time off from groping.
  • North Korea – They used to have a pathetic but functioning economy. That situation is changing rapidly.
  • ISIS – Remember ISIS? They used to be a big deal.
  • TPP – Pulled out
  • Paris Climate Accord – Pulled out 
  • Reality – I told you in 2015 that candidate Trump would change more than politics. I told you he would change the way we saw reality. Do you remember when you thought the news reported facts and that humans used those facts to make reasoned decisions? You probably don’t think that anymore.
Trump makes people uneasy,* and although he sometimes seems to be out-of-control, Adams contends that he is anything but. Donald Trump is a disruptor in an age of technological, cultural, and political disruption. The demolition he precipitates is indeed as important as the construction he champions.

FOOTNOTE:
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* Trump's unfortunate and crass characterization (in a private conversation) of the originating countries for some of our immigrants as "s#$*holes" gave many of the elites the vapors. It was a stupid blunder on his part, but let's get real for just a moment. Many of the countries in question are severely broken—violent, corrupt, economic basket cases with totalitarian leadership. Call them what you will—they are generally not a place you'd want to live. And apparently, that's true for the thousands of immigrants who want to leave.

The big question, is it our responsibility to allow everyone who wants to leave these broken countries sanctuary in the USA? Is there a limit to the numbers we allow to immigrate. 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? 10,000,000? 100,000,000? At some point, we have to establish limits, and that's something that progressives never want to think about.