The no-filter president - today's edition

Just how cacophonous and stupid is discourse in post-America?

This one would confuse someone who just dropped in from another planet, totally unacquainted with what's been going on here for the last ten years.

Leftists loathe the Koch Brothers, mainly because nearly all of them are hopelessly ignorant and don't understand that the Koch Foundation generously supports the arts and has financed the building of several hospital wings around the country, and have no idea of the essence as well as the scope of Charles Koch's worldview, the formulation of which he lays out in his book Good Profit: How Creating Value for Others Built One of the World's Most Successful Companies.

But how are they going to reconcile the fact that the supreme object of their hate, the Very Stable Genius, is also excoriating the Koch network?

The Kochs believe in maximizing human freedom and economic uplift. Opportunity excites them, and they spread that excitement through groups they fund, such as Americans for Prosperity, the Libre Initiative and Generation Opportunity.

They don't have any use for protectionism, which is what spurred the Very Stable Genius to exhibit his signature pettiness and penchant for "alpha male" insult on Twitter today:

The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against Strong Borders and Powerful Trade. I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas. They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more. I made them richer. Their network is highly overrated, I have beaten them at every turn. They want to protect their companies outside the U.S. from being taxed, I’m for America First & the American Worker — a puppet for no one. Two nice guys with bad ideas. Make America Great Again!

What a Trumpism-rich paragraph. "Globalist." "Highly overrated." "Total joke." "I made them richer."

You see, they love the actual free-market stuff, bu aren't so keen on the protectionist stuff.

Mr. President, I doubt this is going to occur to you, but what this means is that they have a consistent set of principles and you have nothing more than a scrambled, fevered mind. (The kind of mind that comes up with an utterance like "Without trade, we'd save a hell of a lot of money.")

Along with reinforcing his image as a petulant man-child, this outburst indicates that there's no getting to him, no convincing him to change his mind on tariffs and agricultural subsidies.

Do the shills now have to fall in line? If any of them are AFP members, do they have to tear up their cards?

I have a feeling we'll see more of this kind of stepping on toes of people searching for some kind of reason to work with this hot mess.

Smug Trumpists may need to squarely face the main thing they're in denial about

Jay Cost at NRO says there's good reason to believe Dems are going to have a good midterm election, and here's exactly why:

The predicament for today’s Republicans is not the agenda or the state of the union. The predicament is the president himself, Donald Trump.

Trump is not currently facing a Watergate-level scandal that threatens to bring down his administration. It looked as if this might be the case in, say, the spring of 2017, when it seemed to his critics as though he may have fired FBI director James Comey because the Bureau was on the verge of uncovering collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign. But there seems to have been no collusion, and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is now primarily focused on apparently unrelated matters. Maybe Mueller will conclude that Trump obstructed justice, but that is not the issue at the moment.

Instead, Trump’s challenge is that he seems incapable of acting the way most Americans expect their president to act.

Our country is a republic, and a very egalitarian one at that. We all love a rags-to-riches story, after all. With a little grit and pluck, anybody can do anything in the United States. Our fascination with the British monarchy is a manifestation of our own commitment to equality — we would never have an institution like the Crown in the United States, so we all stare agog at it whenever one of the royals gets married.

But still, we have our limits. Our monument to George Washington may be a plain, white obelisk, but it is still a monument. The person who occupies Washington’s chair is expected to act like that great man, at least a little bit. He is supposed to be measured, restrained, and dignified. 

Trump has been none of those things. He has undoubtedly advanced the conservative agenda, but he has not done so in a presidential manner. 

And, assuming Cost is right, that's going to matter to a sufficient number of voters  to put a real damper on this advance-the-conservative-agenda business.

And then all the garbage from Derek Hunter, Kurt Schlichter, Bookworm, Conrad Black, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity about not caring what kind of life the Very Stable Genius has led, and how he conducts himself, is going to be sucked dry of every last molecule of persuasiveness that it ever had.

As you can imagine, the comment thread underneath Cost's piece includes an ample supply of shills. They put forth the arguments you expect from them: Justice Ginsberg will almost certainly retire in the next couple of years; who do you want appointing her replacement? (Never mind that we're talking about the midterms. The next presidential election is a whole different animal, and at this juncture I'd be willing to wager that the Very Stable Genius wins it; the country currently has less appetite for wealth redistribution and identity politics than it does for boorishness.) Politeness would not have cut it in 2016. If voters put Dems in charge of Congress, they are an ungrateful lot. And so on.

None of that is going to be worth a stinking thing if Cost's theory is correct.

No president - of whatever ideological stripe, in any period - ever has conducted himself with less dignity than this guy, and it's going to matter politically. Later this year.

The damage Trumpism is doing to conservatism and how it's playing out at Hillsdale College

Conor Friedersdorf wrote a piece at The Atlantic published July 25 asking if Hillsdale College was in danger of losing its soul, given president Larry Arnn's publicly hopping on the "I-understand-that-Trump-is-far-from-personally-exemplary-but-on-balance-he's-great-for-our-country" bandwagon.

Much of it is devoted to Vice President Pence's recent commencement address there - one in which he gave well-stated lip service to the time-honored values enshrined in Hillsdale's mission, but then went on to engage in overt promotion of his administration, and particularly the president at the head of it.

But here's the essence of Friedersdorf's point:

. . . Arnn [does not] talk as if he believe[s] that good moral character is really essential in an American president—he talk[s] as if [he] believe that a president who flagrantly exhibits all manner of character flaws and odious behavior can put the country on a trajectory that benefits it greatly for decades if he appoints good judges.

Neither [does he] seem to believe in opposing the elevation and empowerment of such men on principle. [He] talks as if doing what’s politically advantageous is obviously the best way forward. The prudent thing is to elect a flagrantly immoral man if he’s going to do things like appoint originalist judges and hire Hillsdale graduates as bureaucrats. In short, they talk as if they believe that the ends justify the means––as if they don’t think Pence has done anything wrong because Pence behaves as if he shares their malleable, relativistic posture, and is willing to be less than truthful with the public to ensure victory. 

Friedersdorf heard from a number of students and alums and shared their responses in a piece two days later.

There were a lot of them. I could make this post really lengthy by quoting every incisive expression of the common point, but I'll just choose a few:

An incoming Hillsdale freshman writes:

I chose Hillsdale because I loved the personal experience through the admissions process and the values the school represents. "Pursuing truth and defending liberty" are two ideas I hold near to my heart. I am disappointed to see Arnn continue to prop up a president who does not share these values. As a young conservative who loves reading and listening to Ben Shapiro, Jonah Goldberg, and David French, I can say I love to see taxes cut, regulations destroyed, and judges I like appointed.

These are things that would come if Rubio or Bush were president. The damage Trump does to the conservative movement outweighs his good. I would rather a president be strong against Russians, disavow Neo-Nazis, and open his arms to legal immigrants than cut my taxes. While I have not spent a school day on campus, I think I understand many students see this. They understand the president is a morally corrupt clown. I do not think students love Trump like his most fervent supporters.

A Hillsdale senior writes:

I am majoring in politics, and I wanted to say I completely agree with your article. I've been Never Trump since the beginning, and I'm really disappointed that Dr. Arnn has tied my school so closely to the current administration.

The argument is one that happens at Hillsdale very often. The usual defense of Arnn's tying us to Trump goes along the lines of “don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good,” but that is just utilitarianism. The larger scale argument also largely mimics Dennis Prager's point here, but that doesn't justify not even acknowledging that his critics have a point about Trump's moral and philosophical problems.

Hillsdale is slowly morphing from a school that I was proud to go to into one that I'm embarrassed to attend. It's been going on for a while, but recently it has been accelerating. I really appreciate you writing an article that speaks to what myself and many other Hillsdale students think. Hillsdale is going to lose our credibility if this trend continues.

A current student writes:

Your article reminded me of my first semester when my professors taught me these wise words of Cicero: “The influence of moral right is so potent, that it eclipses the specious appearance of expediency.” I'm afraid Arnn doesn't practice what professors preach here at the College.

His inexcusable posture towards the Trump administration must be, as you say, driven by utilitarian concerns. The GOP is good for the endowment––it's as simple as that. Arnn has a lot of skin in the game. His reputation is built on his success as a breadwinner. This role earns him respect and an exorbitant salary from of the administration, though many of us, students and faculty, remain unimpressed.

Says another current student:

First, thank you for writing the article. There are indeed a significant number of current students and recent alumni who are deeply concerned about the things you mentioned in your piece, and with any luck it may help to instigate more genuine and fruitful discussion on the issue; something which has (unfortunately) often been lacking between the administration/student government and the rest of the student body.

I do see a deep problem with the College’s relationship with the Trump administration, on at least two counts. First, Trump himself represents many of the absolute worst elements of the right wing in America (I do not say conservative, because they aren’t conservative in any authentic sense).

And, this isn’t simply his sexual escapades and uncomfortable flattery of certain tyrannical rulers; it’s the fact that he fundamentally lacks any semblance of a consistent understanding of conservatism, and has consistently failed to demonstrate the ability to conduct reasonable and respectful political discourse. Many of his policies, and virtually all of his methods and tactics, are repugnant to the values that Hillsdale teaches.

Second, Pence: whatever could have been said about his career in Indiana politics, he’s rarely risen above craven sycophancy throughout the campaign and administration. The reality is that in all likelihood Pence has exerted no moderating influence on Trump (if he has, and this is the moderated version, then God help us), while he has provided false legitimacy to Trump, largely among the evangelical voter base. It is, however, unsurprising that someone who lacked the moral courage to oppose Trump’s many faults before the election would not suddenly find the fortitude to do so once in the desired position of power.

One of the more prevalent arguments in favor of Pence that I have heard on Hillsdale campus is that because of his high office, he deserves our respect and we ought to feel honored by his visit. This position, to me, is vacuous. Genuine respect (as distinct from basic civility) is earned, and this is especially true when the person in question holds a high office. Where the normal standard for respect is that the person in question be a good and virtuous human person (or something like this); for a man in high office to deserve respect he must display wisdom and prudence, and perform his duties with excellence. Neither Trump nor Pence have done this, and so the fact that they hold high office (in what I regard as an unworthy manner) is not a source of honor. Rather, it is a high standard they have failed to meet.

It is also my opinion that, even on a pragmatic level, associating with the administration in any meaningful way is a mistake for the college. Hillsdale’s mission (and, let me be clear, the faculty that I encounter in my disciplines fulfill this admirably) and belief has always focused on the importance of a liberal education to human flourishing in general, as well as to good political discourse. What characterizes ‘Trumpism’ all too often is a sort of weaponized ignorance that might occasionally win political battles but which will inevitably undermine the foundations of authentic conservatism and any just political order.

In the terms of my discipline (philosophy), what Trump is doing is leading the regress of conservatism into little more than emotivism. It is this, more than his personal moral failings, that is the core of why the current administration and Hillsdale College ought not be allies, even uneasy ones. Ultimately, the internal rot that is Trumpism will do far more harm than any short-term goods achieved by defeating Hillary Clinton.

Hillsdale will survive the Trump administration, but it will do so only because what the college is actually doing most of the time is quite different from the public image. The faculty are mostly incredible, and there’s plenty of room for healthy disagreement in a meaningful and profound way. I, and many others, have experienced tremendous intellectual growth in our time at Hillsdale. When I criticize the college, it is because I love it and what it can be, at its best.

Ultimately, I think its relationship with the administration represents a tragic loss of opportunity—the opportunity to show a much better kind of conservatism, one centered around the timeless, beautiful, and true things that it aspires to, rather than on many of the basest impulses of the American right. Hillsdale has a lot to offer, but right now it is failing to do that in pursuit of very short-sighted political goals.

Yet another current student writes:

I am very glad the hypocrisy of the administration at Hillsdale College when it comes to Trump and Pence has been brought to light, as we are not allowed to directly criticize the administration in the college’s student newspaper. This hypocrisy runs much deeper than just political utilitarianism despite the guise of pursuing “the good, the true, and the beautiful.” The administration often chooses a more authoritarian approach when it comes to dealing with students and opinions differing from those of the donors. Often the administration will put forth the concept that they are teaching us to be free, but not giving students very much freedom at all. I have a laundry list of experiences with the administration that reflect this hypocrisy.

A graduate from Hillsdale’s Class of 2018 writes:

The moral tensions that you broach in your article are ones that I felt viscerally during my tenure as a Hillsdale student and now as a graduate. The Hillsdale College that advertises on conservative talk radio and Fox News, the one I internally label "Rush Limbaugh's Hillsdale," is not the Hillsdale College that I experienced.

It was in the trenches of Hillsdale College that I received an invitation to participate in the tradition of a humble community engaged in honest and unflagging pursuit of a greater understanding. The path offered remains intellectually and even existentially perilous, but it is nonetheless a route that I would not forsake. This is the ideal form of what Hillsdale can offer to its students and share with the world at large.

"Rush Limbaugh's Hillsdale" is but a severe adulteration of this form, and all frustration I have with the college stems from the fact that the administration does not actively dispel this reputation, but rather perpetuates it by doing things such as inviting Mike Pence to give a commencement speech. Of course, I am not naive to the financial reasons for why this is so, but this is in no way a relationship that I endorse.

For the sake of brevity I'll refrain from utter diatribe against what you aptly titled the "transactional alliance" Hillsdale has with its donor base. I merely want to indicate that there are at least some concerned students and professors who are not at all ignorant of this tension and that the values pursued at Hillsdale College do in fact transcend the unwanted approbation of talking heads and debatably "oleaginous" politicians.

Says another 2018 graduate:

The graduation speech from Pence that provided the basis for your recent article, 'Is Hillsdale College Gaining the World and Losing Its Soul?', was my graduation. I would like to give you an account of the internal debacle that was the selection and speech of Vice President Pence.

An important thing to note is the separation between the image of Hillsdale and the true nature of what is taught there. The 'political, conservative bastion of freedom' is largely the promotion of the administration. Some believe this is to draw more donors as well as children of very conservative families. I am not claiming that we do not have conservatives on campus, for I would say a large portion would identify as such.

But these are the conservatives who cherish the inherent value and virtue in education. Professors and students alike are moreso apolitical and care about debates of free will vs. determinism, or spending a day to watch students perform Shakespeare. We are crazy about ideas, not contemporary politics. Students do not come to Hillsdale for pragmatic, political ends, sans a few individuals who want nothing more in life than to be a politician. And these select few are the only students who wanted someone like Pence to deliver our graduation address.

The address is typically selected by the student committee that consists of the nominated president, VP, secretary and treasurer of the senior class. Last year we selected a Dante translator, to give you a frame of reference.

However, this committee failed to find a speaker for reasons I would chalk up to poor choices. In a pinch, Dr. Arnn pulled a few strings to secure Pence as a speaker to bolster the "conservative heaven" image. The tone of the student body upon hearing the announcement was depressed. We knew what was coming—a pandering speech of no substance or content which would throw Hillsdale onto the political stage. If one could see the audience of graduating seniors during Pence's speech, one would see bored, uninterested students who were occasionally awoken and coerced into standing to clap, or students shaking their heads, smirking with discontent to fellow graduates. If it were not for our politeness and respect for his position, and the high energy nature of his speech, we would have remained seated.

A 2015 graduate of Hillsdale writes, “You have put into words what I have thought since Larry Arnn endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 election.”

Hillsdale is serving as a microcosm for what is happening to conservatism generally. This headlong embrace of Trump of necessity means that some very foundational aspects of this worldview we call conservatism must no longer be mentioned, or at least must be hurriedly glossed over, in the interest of dragging short-term policy goals over the - and placing one's faith in a figure who doesn't even understand, much less share,  this worldview.

There were a lot more responses, some from alums who graduated twenty years ago and more.

It reinforces for me what I said in a post the other day:

 . . . every day brings fresh evidence that our hearts and our intuition gave us good guidance.

The Trumpists - both of the obsequious variety, like Pence and Arnn, and the vicious variety, like Kurt Schlichter - are not going to seize the brass ring that is assuming the mantle of conservatism, because what they're peddling, built as it is on a foundation of sand, is not going to work. And that is where real conservatives, who were never rendered irrelevant but rather continued to argue as they always had, despite the cacophonous din of the Trump era, can say, "May I offer a suggestion?"

And heads will turn, because the disillusioned Trumpists will be hungry for actual answers.

Socialism's it girl (and Econ major) clearly hasn't thought through the how-to-pay-for-it end of her ideology

On the heels of her Israel stumble, Ocasio-Cortez sputters when asked about where the money comes from for her grand vision:

In an interview with Trevor Noah on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” Thursday night, candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tried to explain how the United States would pay for all of the entitlements the self-described democratic socialist has campaigned on — including fully taxpayer-sponsored Medicare, college tuition, and housing.

“If people pay their fair share, if corporations and the ultra wealthy, for example, as Warren Buffett likes to say, if he pays as much as his secretary paid, a 15 percent tax rate, if corporations paid, if we reverse the tax bill, raised our corporate tax rate to 28 percent– which is not even as high as it was before — if we do those two things and also close some of those loopholes, that’s $2 trillion right there,” she said. “That’s $2 trillion in ten years.”

CNN estimates that providing Medicare for all would cost $1.4 trillion annually. That means $2 trillion over the course of 10 years would provide a small percentage of the funds she’d need for one plank of her platform alone.

“If we implement a carbon tax on top of that, so that we can transition and incentivize people away from fossil fuels,  if we implement a carbon tax, that’s an additional amount of a large amount of revenue that we can have,” she said.

The democratic congressional nominee did not specify how much revenue would be raised through a carbon tax. Economists estimate it may cost as much revenue as it may generate, while increasing unemployment. Ocasio-Cortez also suggested cutting military spending — because the military doesn’t want more fighter jets! Or, presumably, anything else. 

“Just last year we gave the military a $700 billion budget increase, which they didn’t even ask for!” she said. “They’re like, ‘We don’t want another fighter jet!’ They’re like, ‘Don’t give us another nuclear bomb!’ you know?”

Probably Russia and China enjoy hearing that sort of thing from a politician whose platform fits their countries’ kleptocratic and communist governments. 

Another lefty who's long on feels and short on reals.

The rapidly dwindling interest in character

This is one of those posts that comes from synthesizing several pieces and news items I've come across during a morning.

Let's start with the one I actually read last. Remember the discussion about Kimberly Guilfoyle leaving Fox News in a post the other day? Man, oh, man is there some backstory to that.

When it was revealed last week that longtime Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle would be leaving the network, some Fox News and White House insiders were surprised that she was choosing to move on from the cable news channel and head to a pro-Donald Trump super PAC. For nearly two years — even once rumors eventually kicked up that she might join the Trump administration — Guilfoyle said that, as a single mother, she had to think of her son’s financial future and couldn’t afford to leave the high-paying gig, multiple sources told HuffPost.Guilfoyle’s departure was initially billed as her decision. However, as HuffPost first reported last week, multiple sources said she did not leave the network voluntarily. They said Guilfoyle was informed her time at Fox News was up following a human resources investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior including sexual misconduct, and that her lawyers had been involved since the spring. Sources also said that despite being told she would have to leave by July, Guilfoyle repeatedly attempted to delay her exit and tried to have her allies appeal to Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News, to let her stay at the network.
This story is based on interviews conducted over the past year with 21 sources inside and outside Fox News and 21st Century Fox. All sources spoke to HuffPost on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak to the press, did not want to raise Guilfoyle’s ire or have signed nondisclosure agreements that prevent them from speaking to others about their experiences.

Just what was the inappropriate behavior?

Six sources said Guilfoyle’s behavior included showing personal photographs of male genitalia to colleagues (and identifying whose genitals they were), regularly discussing sexual matters at work and engaging in emotionally abusive behavior toward hair and makeup artists and support staff.

And she seems to have had a penchant for trying to stoke divisions within the network:

The current and former Fox News employees who have spoken to HuffPost over the past year said Guilfoyle, who has a reputation for being unfailingly loyal to certain people, caused a rift among women at the network after former network host Gretchen Carlson sued Ailes for sexual harassment and retaliation. Some of those sources expected Guilfoyle to be pushed out for leading the charge against Carlson and others, and were surprised when she managed to hold on.

Guilfoyle called female on-air talent at Fox News in the summer of 2016 and asked them to make supportive statements about Ailes publicly, sources said. Five sources who said they received calls from Guilfoyle said she framed it as making a decision as to whether they were “Team Roger” or “Team Gretchen.”  

There's more. She'd tried to protect herself by buttering up the late Roger Ailes, and was particularly close to Eric Bolling, who was, like Ailes and Bill O'Reilly, ousted from FNC.

HR had had enough of her shenanigans, however.

According to sources, Guilfoyle was the subject of a human resources investigation that started last year and involved interviews with Fox News employees, including hair and makeup artists and producers. Sources said HR warned Guilfoyle about her behavior several times, including a stern warning from Kevin Lord, the head of Fox News HR, in the fall of 2017. HuffPost also began investigating Guilfoyle’s workplace conduct last year.

Check out the final stunt she pulled before the plug was pulled:

Days before she left Fox News for the last time, Guilfoyle got herself booked on Steve Hilton’s Sunday program ― even though she had been told she was no longer going to be on air. According to two sources, she told Hilton he should tell Fox News brass he wanted her as a regular. Hilton, according to sources, didn’t know that Guilfoyle was leaving the network.

Now, I don't want to narrow this down to some kind of "Trump camp" observation. We are all fallen creatures in need of grace. But think about the nature of her recent pals (and paramours): Eric Bolling, DJT, Jr., Steve Hilton. Trumpists all.

As I said in the post from the other day, my first reaction is just deep sadness at how far our culture has deteriorated. The Left has no problems with its people acting like idiots, charlatans and sybarites, but in the wake of the Trump phenomenon, much of the right is now inured to the same kinds of antics coming from its spokespeople.

Which leads me to David Limbaugh's Townhall column today, in which he takes exception to The Weekly Standard's Andy Smarick for still - at this late date! Can you believe it? - finding Donald Trump's behavior and the example it sets objectionable. His grounds are the argument you hear a lot these days: The Very Stable Genius is getting results!

Here, I think Smarick is guilty (not morally, mind you), of the "sin" he decries. He is the one missing the forest for the trees. He is the one ignoring the overwhelmingly positive impact of the Trump presidency and unduly magnifying (and distorting) the actions and statements of Trump that he finds objectionable.

Trump is sui generis. He is like no other president we've had or will ever have again. He is so refreshingly outside the box that his supporters are growing stronger rather than weaker in their support -- because they're seeing results and they're witnessing Trump's extraordinary fulfillment of his campaign promises -- even the ones some of us feared, like tariffs.

Trump's personality may lend itself to developing superficial, personal relationships with tyrants, but that is only troubling (for the most part) if it leads to bad policy results. Who cares if he is chummy with Putin, so long as he continues to restore our military and implements prudently hawkish policies against Russia that serve America's interests? In the overall scheme, who cares if stroking Kim Jong Un's ego and appealing to his greed is what entices the dictator to dismantle his nuclear program and, possibly, begin to open up his markets? And if Trump's hard-core trade rhetoric results in significantly better deals for the United States, with only minor short-term damage, then this former skeptic may become a believer on that score as well.

Flimsy stuff, coming from a guy whose Christianity ostensibly shapes his worldview.

Juxtapose that with Jonah Goldberg's column in the same venue:

. . . it seems to me that we've passed some kind of tipping point.

I don't know when it happenedbut the trend stretches back a long way. Some might want to start the timeline in the radicalism of the 1960s or the selfishness of the "Me Decade" 1970s. Others might lay blame on the alleged greed of the 1980s. The point is that Americans, regardless of ideology, are more inclined to go with their own moral or political instincts than to rely on experts or defer to institutions.

The consequences of this cultural revolution are a familiar lament for many conservatives. Self-esteem is valued over self-discipline. Regular church attendance has been in steady decline (the numbers are debated, the trend is not), while the number of people who say they are "spiritual but not religious" has been steadily growing. According to the Pew Research Center, 27 percent of Americans describe themselves this way. In other words, a growing number of Americans haven't lost their religious sensibility -- for want of a better word -- they've simply decided they can be their own priests, as it were.

In short, our understanding of the world has become increasingly personalized, governed by our own judgments, instincts and feelings.

Which brings me to that other category of people: charismatic celebrities. From Oprah to Jordan Peterson, Americans seem less interested in putting trust in institutional "brands" and more interested in following the advice of charismatic people with whom they've formed a personal bond. 

When I use the term "charismatic," I don't mean the colloquial sense of "charming." Originally, a charismatic leader was a king, general or prophet who seemed to be imbued with, or anointed by, divine authority. ("Charisma" comes from the Greek "Kharisma," meaning "gifted with grace.")
German sociologist Max Weber updated the term. Charismatic leaders, he wrote, have a "certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities."

In contemporary America, and perhaps throughout history everywhere, the hallmark of a charismatic leader is the ability to form a personal relationship with his or her followers. People invest their faith in the leader, not in the formal institutions or organizations that traditionally serve as gatekeepers or validators of ideas or programs. 

Today, political leaders -- along with celebrity "influencers" from all manner of vocations -- have discovered that the key to success isn't in a particular platform or institution, but in having a personal following.
Institutions no longer fight to fend off mavericks or upstarts; institutions now try to attract them.

Political parties are late arrivals to this trend. Historically, they served as gatekeepers and validators of candidates. That's no longer really the case. 

With all due respect to Limbaugh, and the entire type of pundit for which he stands in here, it's clear he's fallen for this fascination with a personality. He may couch it in terms of things getting accomplished that please conservatives, but the fascination with Trump as an individual comes across sound and clear. For one thing, he's banking on concrete results coming from Trump's face-time encounters with Kim and Putin, which is pretty speculative at this point. Limbaugh even leads off his second-to-last paragraph by saying, "Call me a cheerleader if you want."

Yes, Trump has accomplished enough good things to allow us to breathe a sigh of relief that we're not now into the nineteenth month of a Clinton presidency. But, like the artificial relations one sees between personalities on FNC (or any such channel, really), all these people have a great deal of phoniness within their constitutions. Consider the famous photograph of DJT, Melania, Bill and Hillary yokking it up at the DJT-Melania wedding reception.

I've just had it with this deliberate ignoring ofwho these people are on the moral level in order to gush about a rising GDP and a vague trade agreement with the European Commission.

Which leads me to the final piece that helped form my thought process as I went about my day: a Charlie Sykes essay in Time in which he states bluntly what's going on:

Republicans tell themselves they are getting a lot of what they want. (Politics is always transactional, right?) They rationalize their acquiescence to Trumpism by pointing to tax cuts, deregulation and conservative judges. Even if Trump’s conduct becomes indefensible, they can always fall back on attacking Trump’s critics, especially in the media.

Yet what Republicans in Congress have found is that rubber-stampism can be addictive and all-consuming; every time they allow a line to be crossed, it is harder to hold the next one, even if that next one is more fundamental. Republicans have made it clear that they have no intention of providing a meaningful check on Trump, and the next Congress could be even worse: from Georgia to Wisconsin, GOP candidates are vying with one another in their pledges of fealty to Trump rather than to any set of ideas.

As a result, what was once a party of ideas has morphed into a virtual cult of personality. Or perhaps, it was never really a party of ideas at all, but instead merely what Lionel Trilling called a movement of “irritable mental gestures” that was willing to surrender its principles for a slogan on a hat.

The problem for conservatives should be obvious: by failing to stand up for their core values in the face of serial Trumpian outrages, they are effectively letting Trump redefine conservatism. A movement that once insisted that “character matters,” has now internalized Trump’s own moral vacuity, accepting a win-at-all costs ethic, even when the costs are all they said they believed in. Republican elected officials barely raise an eyebrow over evidence that suggests Trump lied about and attempted to cover up hush-money payments to porn stars and Playboy models with whom he had extramarital affairs. The party that once championed free markets now sits by as the President picks winners and losers, proposes massive bailouts and browbeats dissenters in the private sector. Rather than defending constitutional norms, some congressional Republicans have been active participants in the campaign to obstruct and undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. This week, 11 conservative House members filed articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the probe. 

I suspect that many Republicans imagine that they will be able to reset the party after Trump leaves the political scene. But this seems increasingly naïve; by allowing themselves to become the party of Trump, they make the stain indelible. They are not servants of the public; they are servants to power.

Unfortunately, it’s hard not to see this as a watershed. Republicans have not only ceded ground to the President, they have done so at profound cost to the norms of liberal constitutional democracy. Power ceded is difficult to get back; moral authority squandered is often lost forever. (See: the acceptance of presidential lies, embrace of incivility and indifference to sexual misconduct.) 

The bottom-line problem is not Trump, nor chattering-class-financial-world-political-realm licentiousness, nor Republican squandering of moral authority. Those are all second-tier ills resulting from the main crisis: the utter rot of our culture.

Trump is a product of the cultural rot of the past 60 years. So is his son. So is Kimberly Guilfoyle.

So are any of us who don't make a personal stand and look deeply into how to reverse this, beginning with ourselves.

Let's start with stating what is is we want:

• Our own humility and unwavering devotion before our Lord
• television personalities who aren't ruthless, thoughtless, hypocritical horndogs
• elected officials and politicians who are driven by principle 
• people generally comporting themselves with dignity and self-control

Insist on these things in ourselves and others. Now, obviously, I can't change the behavior of some pol or talking head, but I can blog that it is unacceptable.

The dismal state of our culture's health is why we had such a grim choice between presidential candidates in 2016. And a whole lot of people - people I used to admire - need to stop kidding themselves that the choice wasn't grim and that the consequences haven't been grim as well.

Quit trying to ignore the spiritual level of all this.

Thursday roundup

San Francisco hates the free market - today's edition. How's this for some nanny-state presumptiveness?

Once upon a time, I had a job with a company-owned cafeteria in the building. While I could still bring my lunch if I wanted, the cafeteria had some really great food at a really low price. As someone who prefers a real meal over a sandwich in most instances, I was a fan.

Now, however, it seems such places are a problem in San Francisco, where frankly everything can be a problem if it tries hard enough.

As the San Francisco Examiner reports: "Two city legislators on Tuesday are expected to announce legislation banning on-site workplace cafeterias in an effort to promote and support local restaurants."

Sponsored by Supervisor Ahsha Safai and Supervisor Aaron Peskin, the measure seeks to use the zoning laws to bar companies from having on-site cafeterias, because the economy or something.

"Peskin said the measure was inspired by tech companies like Twitter and Airbnb, which are widely known to have access to dining in their own buildings, depriving nearby restaurants of the dollars usually spent by nearby workers. The measure has the support of Gwyneth Borden, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association and other local merchants."

Here's an idea, you economically ignorant totalitarians: How about letting people make the lunch decisions they want to?

That agreement announced by European Commission prez Jean-Claude Juncker and the Very Stable Genius certainly got the stock market all excited, but, like the "agreement" with Kim Jong-un, it's long on broad intentions and short on concrete plans. 

This one makes my head hurt. It pits good guys with understandable points against each other - namely, Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise against Paul Ryan. Ryan doesn't support the move to impeach Rod Rosenstein. Of course, comment threads under articles about it are full of "Ryan-can't-step-down-a-minute-too-soon-the-weasly-little-RINO" type sneering. But have these folks really thought about the distraction and time-eating factors? Don't these folks want to get Kavanaugh confirmed before the midterms? I think Allahpunidt at Hot Air has the accurate take:

. . . a bit of virtue-signaling by the Freedom Caucus to Trump’s base to broadcast just how much they hate Trump’s chief inquisitor on Russiagate. Document production is window dressing for what this is really about.

Then again, Mueller, who was hired by Rosenstein, has been at this for over a year and a half and there's still not a shred of evidence of collusion.

Facebook is having a terrible, very bad, no good week.

Daren Jonescu observes how a Trump-shill site covers a North Korea development - that took place months before the Kim-Trump summit:

. . . for the cultists, who never let an opportunity to make fools of themselves go to waste, this story of Kim dismantling a defunct testing site — which he promised to do in Singapore presumably because it was a defunct site — is yet another chance to ring dem bells. Hence Monica Showalter, an editor at American Thinker, dutifully wrote a blog post entitled, “So the great Singapore summit ‘nothingburger’…has led to North Korea quietly dismantling its arsenal.”

Dismantling its arsenal! That’s quite a claim. So she has evidence that the North Koreans have begun to destroy missiles, hand over nuclear materials, and the like?

Well, no, not exactly that. Actually, not even approximately that. In fact, not even anything remotely related to that. But if you’re an ardent enough worshipper, everything looks like a Sign, so you tend to get a little ahead of yourself: “Just call him super-statesman, peaceniks,” Showalter concludes, with a gushing school-girlishness that would be embarrassing to witness were the sentiment not shared by millions of other biological adults, many of them married men.

And then there is today’s news, from Reuters:

North Korea is continuing to produce fuel for nuclear bombs in spite of its pledge to denuclearize, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday, even as he argued that the Trump administration was making progress in talks with Pyongyang. 

Asked at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing whether North Korea was still making bomb fuel, Pompeo responded to Democratic Senator Ed Markey by saying: “Yes, that’s correct … Yes, they continue to produce fissile material.”

Pompeo declined to respond when asked whether North Korea was continuing to pursue submarine-launched ballistic missiles or whether its nuclear program was advancing generally.

He said he would be happy to answer the latter question if necessary in a classified setting, but suggested public statements on the issue would not help “a complex negotiation with a difficult adversary.”

Sounds a little different from Showalter’s idolatrous visions of sugar-plums from the day before, doesn’t it? I’m not worried about her, or any of the rest of the cultists, as I’m sure none of this more realistic reporting can crack through a shell that hard, so they will all sleep peacefully, secure in their fantasy world of Trump’s super-statesmanship. Not to worry, they tell themselves: North Korea is dismantling its nuclear arsenal, Vladimir Putin is a great ally in the fight to save Christianity and traditional values, Trump is winning the trade war that isn’t happening, bailouts are a great example of the kind of business sense that only a billionaire can understand, and Hillary isn’t president. God is in his heaven, bathed in orange light.

Fox News stands in solidarity with CNN over the matter of CNN reporter Caitlan Collins being told she was not welcome at the Trump-Juncker presser.

Not a moment of regret

I hope I've been effective in positioning LITD as a conservative site that maintains, even into the second half of 2018, that it was a mistake for the Republican Party to nominate Donald Trump as president.

I'd always known he was a self-absorbed, petty, bombastic, hedonistic loudmouth, so I did a bit of wincing when he descended the escalator at Trump Tower in July 2015 and made his grand announcement. Still with the fine bench that was shaping up on the GOP side, particularly with Ted Cruz, who wound up being the last contender before bowing out that sad, sad night in Indianapolis in May 2016, I wasn't overly concerned about the Trump phenomenon.

There's been a lot to weather since that period. The decision on the part of his slavish devotees to jettison their critical faculties. Their claims that anything less than total devotion to his "agenda" constituted ceding the battleground to the Left. The increasing momentum with which the Left has become unhinged. Calls from those with whom I'm aligned on the dispositional level to quit voting Republican altogether. The layers of cacophony are dizzying to try to comprehend.

There's the whole question of how infected the Department of Justice and the FBI are with the notion that a Trump administration is unacceptable, and what actions were taken on that basis. It's clear, from evidence such as the Stzrok-Page emails and now Comey's vote-Democrat coming-out, that it's pretty serious.

Then you get odd moments like the across-the-spectrum consensus that these tariffs are a horrible idea, or a nearly-as-unified negative take on the Helsinki summit and the European trip generally.

And, per the Cohen tape played on CNN yesterday, it's clearer than ever that the Very Stable Genius did indeed carry on an affair with former Playmate Karen McDougal.

Then there's this layer: shills of the evangelical sort, such as Robert Jeffress, who cling to that flimsy "we-didn't-elect-a-pastor" position.

But you know what? I'm actually sort of upbeat. The position I've had all along has been vindicated.

For all the Donald Trumps, Trump shills, Beltway bureaucrats with anti-Trump agendas, and pussy-hat-wearing, storefront-smashing, vulgarity-spewing Leftists, there is, as there always has been, one approach that's never been tried in pure form: three-pillared conservatism. And it's still there, waiting to be implemented.

I - and those (whose numbers and refusal to die drive Trumpists up the wall) of like mind - are on solid ground maintaining what we did as the election results in November 2016 became clear: We're in a position to applaud good moves on the part of this administration, while pointing out instances in which it's doing harm.

As has always been the case, anything detrimental that is happening to America could be ameliorated - quickly - with conservative public policy and cultural prevalence.

A midterm is coming up, people. It's a chance to vote for those candidates who would do the most to further the principles we know will work. Some are a little too enthusiastic about the Very Stable Genius for me, but I think they'd come down on the correct side of particular bills that came before them.

No, every day brings fresh evidence that our hearts and our intuition gave us good guidance.

Any time America wants to try the real thing, it's going to work. And the current clown show is going to make that increasingly apparent.

Why one fairly economically resilient community has the tariff jitters

Yesterday we looked at the ridiculous gyrations the administration is putting itself through to shore up the ag sector in the wake of the damage done by tariffs.

How about power generation? Or construction?

The Washington Post takes a look at the case of Mike Pence's hometown, the generally economically robust city of Columbus, Indiana. A cross-section of folks there are mighty apprehensive:

According to the Brookings Institution, the Columbus area is the most export-reliant region in the country, with just over half of its economic output linked to foreign purchases.

“I’m very worried,” said Tom Linebarger, the chief executive of Cummins, who met with President Trump over dinner at the White House in January in a bid to dissuade him from introducing steel and aluminum tariffs or tearing up free-trade agreements.

Linebarger, 55, warns of job losses ahead because thousands of jobs at Cummins and elsewhere in the area depend on trade.

“We will do everything we can to mitigate . . . the impact to jobs,” he said. “It’s very clear, though, that we’re not going to be able to mitigate everything.”

Pence’s hometown oozes internationalism: 40 foreign companies have a presence, more than half of them Japanese engines and auto-parts plants, employing almost 10,000 people. The area’s schools collectively speak 51 languages. The city ranks second in the nation in the per capita percentage of H-1B visas for foreign workers. 

Cummins plants produced the drill that powered the famous rescue of Chilean miners in 2010 and the emergency generator at the Statue of Liberty.
Now the aggressive pursuit of foreign trade that made this city a recession-busting economic miracle has made it decidedly vulnerable, with businesses already canceling projects and mulling the depth of job losses.

The Cummins plants, which produce engines, generators and other equipment, epitomize how deeply international trade has become rooted in cities and towns throughout the nation. Cummins alone has 25,000 different suppliers and also its own chain of distribution, both of them largely international. Its U.S. base is bolstered by operations in the United Kingdom, China and India.

Linebarger said the president’s trade war hits the company in two ways, affecting both its incoming parts, which will be subject to tariffs, and its own products, on which retaliatory penalties will be assessed by countries targeted by Trump.

For Cummins, the two most corrosive tariffs will be those assessed on steel and aluminum, which began July 1 and cover $48 billion of imports, and the proposed $351 billion of automobile and auto part imports. Both have been justified as necessary for national security.

The vice president’s brother Ed ran what is now the most vulnerable of the company’s factories: the high-horsepower engine plant in Seymour, outside Columbus, which employs 1,000 people. Its biggest export is a 95-liter engine, which is the size of a car and can power hospitals and football stadiums. It is so specialized that only 10 can be made per week. Of these, eight will be sold abroad.

“We almost put the factory in India. We evaluated the U.K. and China too. If we’d seen trade barriers at that point, we’d definitely have made a different decision,” says Linebarger.

Folks who put up buildings are feeling it, too:

Other local businesses are seeing the effects as well. Harold Force, 67, has run a construction company founded by his father since 1980, which currently employs 250 people. Now he is coping with rising prices on items he needs for contracts signed in less expensive days before the trade war.

Already, he said, he has had to cancel plans to expand his workforce.

“I think this is a much bigger deal than people think. When it started, it was shock. I thought, ‘Is this really happening?’ Then one of our biggest projects in recent times was canceled because of steel prices,” he said.

“It’s damaging in so many ways,” he said. “Tariffs have put blood in the water.” 

And the Economic Development Board - the outfit that's been instrumental in giving the city its international flair - is nixing plans for an annual junket to the Pacific Rim:

Jason Hester of the Greater Columbus Economic Development Corporation has traveled to China for the last nine years to whip up investment. This year, he’s canceled his travel plans.

“There’s nothing we’re going to decide, so what would the point be?” he asked.

The shills love to tout the economic uplift from the tax-reform package (the credit for which actually goes to Congress), but there are now quite audible rumblings of portent of a markedly different nature.

Somebody needs to tell the Very Stable Genius this isn't making him look like a winner.

Grabbing subsidization as an attempted quick fix for protectionism

First, take in the full pettiness, boorishness and economic ignorance of this tweet from the Very Stable Genius:

Tariffs are the greatest! Either a country which has treated the United States unfairly on Trade negotiates a fair deal, or it gets hit with Tariffs. It’s as simple as that - and everybody’s talking! Remember, we are the “piggy bank” that’s being robbed. All will be Great!

Now, consider what the pointy-heads feel it's necessary to do with your tax dollars in order to deal with the fallout from this kind of "thinking":

The White House is expected to announce a plan to provide $12 billion in government aid to farmers harmed by the administration’s multi-front trade war, the Washington Post first reported Tuesday morning.

Under the plan, which could be announced as soon as Tuesday, farmers whose products have been hit with retaliatory tariffs as a result of President Trump’s tariffs on other countries will be provided access to three distinct forms of aid: direct assistance, a food-purchase program and a trade-promotion program.

The announcement is expected to come as President Trump continues to escalate his protectionist rhetoric on U.S. trade with China.

The administration has already implemented tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese exports and Beijing has retaliated in kind, down to the dollar. In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly threatened to implement tariffs on the entirety of China’s more than $5 billion export market, placing Beijing at a distinct disadvantage, given that it only has roughly $120 billion in U.S. exports available to hit with tariffs.

Soybean farmers have been hit particularly hard by the trade war as prices have plummeted. The president has repeatedly vowed to help soften the blow as Midwestern farmers, a key part of his base, have increasingly turned against his protectionism.

The aid proposal, which relies in part on a depression-era Department of Agriculture program designed to bail out farmers, is the product of a three-month research effort intended to help the administration see its trade war through by warding off domestic opposition in the farming community.

The depression-era program, known as the Commodity Credit Corporation, is empowered to borrow $30 billion from the Treasury Department absent Congressional approval.

So, the hand of Leviathan is brought in to shore up the pricing hose-up that was caused by our current boneheaded trade policy.

Here's a novel idea:

How about if we just let theses farmers sell their products at whatever their true market value is? 

Again I ask, what do Larry Kudlow and Stephen Moore have to say about this in their private discussions?

This gets us pretty far afield from free-market behavior.

In a very real sense, this country is being held hostage to the VSG's personality quirks. In two vital realms - security and trade - it leads to a day-by-day crapshoot.

UPDATE: Just came across this press release from Farmers for Free Trade:

Farmers for Free Trade, the bipartisan coalition working to oppose trade policies that hurt American farmers today released the following statement from Executive Director Brian Kuehl. 

"Farmers across America depend on open markets and stable contracts for their livelihood.  The best relief for the president’s trade war would be ending the trade war. Farmers need contracts, not compensation, so they can create stability and plan for the future. This proposed action would only be a short-term attempt at masking the long-term damage caused by tariffs.." 

“Farmers can and do weather many storms, but this economic cyclone of tariffs is creating long-term, irreversible damage to the heartland. The $20 billion trade surplus in agriculture is due to decades of effort by American farmers who’ve opened new markets and developed world class supply chains.  Unfortunately, a one-time check won’t replace the deterioration of long-term contracts and relationships. Nor will it address the many sectors of agriculture impacted – from producers, to grain bin operators, to shippers. Farmers need stable markets to plan for the future.  As such, we urge the Administration to take immediate action to stop the trade war and get back to opening new markets." 

Amen.

Thanks for absolutely nothin', Pastor Jeffress

Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas and bigwig in evangelical circles, went beyond just shilling for his idol, the Very Stable Genius. He had to slander an actual conservative who did indeed deserve evangelicals' support - namely, Ronald Reagan, as Merrie Soltis at The Resurgent reports.

In his latest blasphemy, Jeffress explained to Fox News host Ed Henry that Evangelicals aren't concerned with Trump's personal iniquities because, Hey! Reagan was bad too!

"This is not an unusual thing. We’ve been here before. Back in 1980, evangelicals chose to support a twice-married Hollywood actor who was a known womanizer in Hollywood. His name was Ronald Reagan. They chose to support him over Jimmy Carter, with a born-again Baptist Sunday school teacher who had been faithfully married to one woman. The reason we supported President Reagan was not because we supporting womanizing or divorce. We supported his policies. And that’s true here, Ed. We are choosing to support his policies. We’re not under any illusion that we were voting for an altar boy when we voted for President Trump. We knew about his past. And by the way, none of us has a perfect past. We voted for him because of his policies.” 

Michael Reagan wasted no time in reacting:

All I can say is go F yourself.Pastor Robert Jeffress Defends Trump’s Evangelical Support By Citing ‘Womanizer’ Reagan - Splinter 

Soltis asks what orifice Jeffress pulled that from:

I don't know where Jeffress gets off calling Reagan a womanizer. Yes, he was divorced. Because his first wife Jane Wyman (mother of Michael) left him. President Reagan never wanted a divorce, but like many of us found himself on the receiving end of one. There is also no evidence that the late president was ever a "womanizer" by any definition of the word. Nobody ever accused him of groping or philandering, not even when he was a Hollywood actor. 

But the main point is that Jeffress has chosen to be an agent of Christian faith's marginalization in post-America:

. . . worse than the insult to Reagan is the damage to Christianity. Last week, The New York Times published an editorial by Michele Margolis highlighting the findings in her study on religion and politics. (https://www.michelemargolis.com/uploads/2/0/2/0/20207607/170928_-_lifecycle.pdf) In America today, people determine their political identity before their religious identity. This is driving Evangelicals to substitute the Republican Party for their church and causing Democrats to leave the church altogether. This is bad for our country. It's even worse for our church.

But, as always, the proper response to those who would use this unseemly alliance to taunt believers is to assert that the Word stands regardless of how many of its supposed proponents turn to false deities.