Each enumerates several reasons for its thesis, presenting them in fleshed-out bullet-point style.
McCullough's core assertion is that the positive developments the nation is currently enjoying leave anti-Trump forces of whatever ideological stance - he pretty much lumps left and right together as the "resistance" - without any argument beyond scandal-mongering.
His reasons:
- An economy that is continuing to aggressively grow, even though difficult realities exist.
- A serious message to the global community that we are no longer a doormat.
- Things are working, that aren’t supposed to.
- Serious national security success.
- A Post-Constitutional Era
- Tribalism
- Federal Government Too Powerful
- Moral Decline
- The Debt
- Lack Of A Shared Culture
- Gun Grabbing
Once you read each author's substantiation for each of his points, I really don't see how any conclusion other than that we're still plummeting to perilous depths can be reached.
McCullough's list consists of developments that are all subject to reversal, whereas the items Hawkins brings before us do not lend themselves to meaningful about-faces. They are matters of the heart. They require courage, neighborliness, depth, and a cherishing of individual human sovereignty.
That's why it's surprising that McCullough, who makes a point of mentioning God in his bio, doesn't wish to at least address them in his column.
Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan, and that can't be stressed enough, but I have, since the Reagan era, felt that a continuing path of decline, even in the face of a robust economy and the end of the Soviet-bloc threat, was overlooked by those who saw an unmitigated Morning in America. Let us not forget that popular culture grew ever-more debased during the 1980s, and that jihadism's rise got underway then. For all the support from high offices for the defense of people who aren't born yet, dismemberment of such people remained, and remains, perfectly legal. Identity politics became more entrenched; it was the era of Jesse Jackson and women's music festivals.
I realize that such a perspective presents branding challenges to a website that, like all websites, is interested in more visits and sustained interest. Wet blankets have little sex appeal. But, as McCullough says is true of him, LITD pursues clarity.
And the verdict remains as it has been since August 2011 here: It is very late in the day.
Maybe there's simply something happening here and you just don't know what it is, bloggie. But if it's this, I presume you'll still carp about and yearn for a shared culture, but good luck with that. You'd try to tear it down if the culture was not sharing what you espouse.
ReplyDelete"Digital fabrication—the process by which data are turned into things, and vice versa—is challenging fundamental assumptions about the nature of work, money and government. All over the world, people are already using a range of computer-controlled tools to make everything from food, furniture and crafts to computers, houses and cars. They’re sharing knowledge remotely, while moving toward community self-sufficiency locally. As these capabilities become widely available in the coming years, institutions and organizations will be caught flat-footed if they don’t start preparing now."
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/04/17/soon-youll-be-able-to-make-anything-itll-change-politics-forever-217999?cmpid=sf
Re: digital fabrication: It's just another technological advancement. It does not address the essence of the human predicament.
ReplyDeleteRe: "You'd try to tear it down if the culture was not sharing what you espouse." Yup. A bad unified culture would have to be opposed as vigorously as a bad splintered culture.
The human predicament is up to each individual to address. Then we die.
ReplyDelete"America was never a doormat. Even during the days of the “ugly American” and local wars that the US perhaps should not have supported, America remained the “shining city on the hill” as former President Reagan termed it, a country whose achievements most other countries worked diligently to emulate and to which people from all over the world traveled to in order to experience the American dream.
ReplyDeleteThe current actions of the president towards Israel and the UN may make create a sense of temporary pride in all of us. But those actions, motivated as they are primarily by a desire to satisfy the body politic that elected him, are not testimony to his foreign policy expertise. One could even make a logical argument that save for the issue of pride, they have resulted in nothing positive. And, as a citizen of Israel, what is worse is that if he is wrong in those actions we here will pay the price."
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/america-was-never-a-doormat-a-response-to-dov-hikind/
"It's hard to see how congressional Republicans can make the case for pro-growth economic policies when the leader of their party is famous for fulminating at private businesses: Those fulminations regularly pummel voters' stock portfolios and 401(k) accounts. Should we expect affected shareholders—people who've lost money because the president was annoyed one morning—to go on supporting that president's party? The GOP can't be the party of free markets and the party of anti-corporate hectoring at the same time."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.weeklystandard.com/the-editors/trump-vs-the-economy
"It may take years to repair the injury to our intelligence community wrought by Trump and the GOP. And let’s not forget the serious damage Attorney General Jeff Sessions is doing. What’s he done? Nothing, and that’s a problem. While he is recused (supposedly) from the Russia investigation, he has declined to stick up for the FBI, a large portion of the department he leads. “It would be helpful if the attorney general would just stand up and defend the work being done,” said Figliuzzi. Whatever your views on former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr., his remarks in early January that “it is something that is both disturbing and heartbreaking to see them being unfairly attacked, and to have nothing but silence coming from the 5th floor of the Justice Department” ring true."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/02/06/trump-damages-the-fbi-and-national-security-trumps-party-cheers/?noredirect=on
Just google "trump slams." Fun parlor game.
ReplyDeleteTrump's a problem for sure, but the point of this post is to look at a broader picture.
ReplyDeleteTrump is the problem with the entirety of McCullough's bright picture and I only agree with one of your shades of black in your dark vision, that of the national debt and certainly disagree with your solution, aligning more with Dems who vow to repeal the faux cuts if they gain control of both houses in Nov.
ReplyDeleteI'll be praying that you come to understand why the other points Hawkins lists are equally disturbing.
ReplyDeleteRe: tax cuts in particular: Government ought to have to puke all over itself to justify taking the first penny from anybody.
There is no other solution to the debt than restructuring Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Your prayers are appreciated, I hope God listens to you more than the rest of us. Many of us leave the direction up to God but far be it from me to get between you and Him, but perhaps you'll know I'm saved by my opinions some day.
ReplyDeleteAs for the tax cut, many of us have cut to the bull shit, it smells and we don't want to have to step in it.
"When the bill passed, many Democrats were gun-shy about making this a prime election issue, on the premise that tax cuts are invariably popular. This one isn’t.
The tax law also gives Democrats the chance to ask: What else might we do with $1.8 trillion? For instance, a true invest-in-America program that rebuilds archaic infrastructure and creates lots of good jobs. Or substantial relief from crippling college debt. On multiple levels, the tax act invites debates that play to the strengths of Democrats.
Each claim in the Republican propaganda is phony. The growth stimulated by the bill will not enable the cuts to pay for themselves. The changes in the tax code are not increasing investment — mainly, they are promoting more corporate stock buybacks that artificially pump up share values and further enrich the rich.
Far from creating incentives to reverse offshoring, the law actually enables corporations to pay a lower rate of tax on profits earned overseas. And despite a good deal of messaging by corporate allies of Trump claiming that worker raises and bonuses are the fruit of the tax cuts, the small number of pay increases are a pittance compared with the tax savings for companies."
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-kuttner-republicans-tax-cut_us_5add0678e4b089e33c8945fc
"America is becoming more like itself again. More Americans are trying to make it so, in more places, than most Americans are aware. Even as the country is becoming worse in obvious ways—angrier, more divided, less able to do the basic business of governing itself—it is becoming distinctly better on a range of other indicators that are harder to perceive. The pattern these efforts create also remains hidden. Americans don’t realize how fast the country is moving toward becoming a better version of itself."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/reinventing-america/556856/?utm_source=polfb (I know, the big bad Atlantic)
"A clear view of the America of this era contains serious perils, like always, but also more promise than at many other times. Through the long saga of American reinvention, the background question has been the one Benjamin Franklin is said to have pondered at the Constitutional Convention when looking at a painting of the sun on the back of George Washington’s chair. Franklin said that he had “often and often” looked at that sun “without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting.” As the Constitution was being signed, Franklin declared that he had “the happiness to know” the sun was rising. It can rise again, and across the country we have seen rays of its new light."
ReplyDeleteIbid
Government doesn't create jobs, and government t shouldn't be in the business of dealing with college-loan debt.
ReplyDeleteAnd government is not entitled to one red cent of anybody's money unless it makes an exhaustive case that it is needed for Constitutionally specified functions.
Whether the money not taxed is invested in anything is none of government's stinking business.
Many voters, perhaps a majority, don't mind taxation for a variety of causes and projects directed at the common welfare.
ReplyDeleteIf it's not in Mr. Madison's document, it's wrong to seize our money at gunpoint to pay for it.
ReplyDeleteTake it to the courts.
ReplyDelete