RE: The Donald Trump thread
Sometimes the things that are staring you right in the face are the hardest of all to see. There are many things about the Trump presidency -- one of the sweetest and most unlikely phrases in American and world history -- that are so overwhelmingly obvious that no one really bothers to notice them. Today, on the two year anniversary of that beautiful, bitterly cold Friday in January 2017 when T was inaugurated to be president of the United States, is as good a time as any to reflect on these things.
Here is the most important, overwhelmingly obvious, but also easy to miss fact about the Trump era: he has permanently and irreversibly changed the world simply by being himself. The continued presence of DJT on the world stage, and always at the exact center of that stage -- as he loves to note, from the very first primary debate, at least when there was an odd number of candidates present -- has unleashed new comic and creative energies, American energies that had been longing to come out but that had lain dormant for a long time. The secular priesthood that had had uncontested control of that center stage for so many years sought to stifle these energies, and with some success; a HAG presidency would have been the ultimate coronation of that secular priesthood, and it would have cast a pall over the lives and spirits of two or three generations of American men -- and a weakening of that spirit, the presence of a few weak links in the uninterrupted chain of American genius, is something that could have caused us some real problems in ways that matter. But -- miraculously -- that is not what happened.
What happened instead, from those very first and unforgettable debates and through every unstumpable Jeb Bush putdown, through every rally in Wisconsin and Costa Mesa and Warwick, Rhode Island, through that incredible November night whose memory still sends a shiver down my spine, and through the months of ceaseless contention that followed the inauguration itself -- what happened was the eruption of a force of nature named Donald J. Trump that presented an irreconcilable, savage difference to all that the secular priesthood believed in and knew was right and proper. And that difference, its very fact, the immovable orange object meeting what had seemed a grimly unstoppable force -- has freed and lifted untold millions of young and not so young American men, freed them into humor, into irreverence, into the possibility of the shit-eating grin that you see on the faces of those Catholic school kids in MAGA hats in that video from today. The lives of these men could have really been botched had a HAG coronation greeted their tender youth at a time of uncontested Year Zero savagery; but now a new and altogether different, benignly savage orange sun had risen on the horizon and this, once seen, could never be unseen. T broke the spell, and you know how it is with spells -- no matter how often or fanatically repeated, they are never the same again once broken.
Of course, none of this means that the secular priesthood -- what I have called elsewhere the Year Zero cadres -- has disappeared, or lost its powers, or has given up; on the contrary, they too have been energized and incited by encountering essential contradiction; it has whipped them into a frenzy of rage and hatred that has been a sight to behold. These powers, and their practical effects on all our lives, are real and they are here to stay for a while to come. But because of the Trump eruption those powers are no longer uncontested at their core -- and this fact has permanently transformed the minds and souls of countless men in America and all over the world. If there is one thing that must be understood about the T era, this is it.
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Now I would like to say a few things about political practicalities which have been the subject of endless -- and honestly, very dull -- debates here and all over the Internet chattersphere. Here too, there are some obvious facts, all of them secondary to the overwhelming fact noted above, but all still worth noting.
The first obvious fact is that the powers of a US president -- any president -- to effect immediate political change are quite limited. This is by design; the ship of state, and such a massive ship as America is, must change its course slowly and consensus is required for any very large changes. This is true of any president, but it is doubly and triply true of someone like Trump, who has encountered a campaign of media, judicial, and legislative obstruction and resistance unlike any president in our history.
Even in the two years in which Republicans ostensibly controlled both chambers of Congress, their hands were effectively tied by the requirement of 60 votes in the Senate to advance legislation; the tax cut bill, because of its specific budgetary nature, was the only major piece of legislation for which this 60 vote requirement could be circumvented. For this reason, any measures that require legislative approval -- and building the wall, to take just one example, falls into that category -- could only have come about as a result of a deal between the two parties. The Democrats have never shown an appetite for such deals; it remains to be seen whether T will be able to use the shutdown to force one through, but to do so would in any case require significant concessions and include things that the Democrats want. This is just political reality; you may not like it but that doesn't change the basic facts.
In addition, the current state of judicial supremacy in the US has meant that many executive initiatives of the T administration -- such as the first travel ban, the attempt to end DACA, and prospectively, any attempt to use emergency powers to build the wall -- have been or will be thwarted by Year Zero district court judges who simply arrive at the verdicts they want and supply the reasoning as needed. These verdicts can be overturned by higher courts -- and ultimately the Supreme Court -- but that is a lengthy and unwieldy process, and while it goes on, the hands of the administration are tied. Again, these are the political realities, like them or not.
Against the backdrop of these limitations, there are two areas in which the T administration has been able to exercise real power: foreign policy, which includes certain aspects of economic policy such as trade; and judicial appointments, which the administration can push through given only a majority in the Senate.
In these two areas where T has had real power and purchase, his record is, by any objective measure, spectacular. Most importantly -- for the ultimate course of world history -- T is the first US president who had the BALLS to stand up to China; indeed it's possible that he has single-handedly reversed the course of Chinese ascendancy. He has understood the weakness of China's economic position and its dependence on the US -- far greater than our dependence on them -- and in the span of a short year he has brought the Chinese economy to its knees and the Chicom leaders to the negotiating table in a way that no one else could have or would have done. This, coupled with T's relentless commitment to US military supremacy and to contesting Chinese initiatives in space and elsewhere, will likely ensure that the US will remain the sole and dominant world superpower for generations to come and indeed the foreseeable future. I don't know if this would have been in doubt in any case, but continued American weakness against China might have caused them to really try to test us at some point, with some possibly very nasty and unpredictable consequences. T's show of strength -- which has stunned the Chinese, and to which they are still struggling to respond -- has made all this much less likely.
The other area of great importance for the long run of American -- and therefore, world -- history has been the way that the T administration has been transforming the US judiciary. The rate of appointments of solidly conservative and constitutionalist judges to district and appellate courts, and of course the Supreme Court, has been without precedent in modern US history. The presence of these judges will safeguard American freedoms from Year Zero assault for generations to come; their importance cannot be exaggerated.
And of course the successful nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court has provided not only the signature moment of the Trump administration so far, but one of the signature moments of American history: in the face of an evil misandrist witch hunt -- the true apex of frenzied Year Zero lies and hatred, the sadistic culmination of the #MeToo hysteria and its attempted destruction of a good and capable man and his beautiful, sweet family -- in the face of all this, the Republicans, for once, held fast. Cocaine Mitch was stronger than mule's piss, and Lindsey Graham had his moment of pure Bee Gees meme ecstasy and inspiration going into the SUV; and of course Kavanaugh himself summoned his spirit of righteous indignation that turned the tide. But all of this was made possible by the steadfastness of Trump who never once considered any outcome other than victory. Any other president would have folded; but T had the BRASS BALLS to stay the course and he made these other men, McConnell, and Graham, and Kavanaugh, stronger and better, he gave them enough of his own strength to see it all through. Other than November 8, 2016 there is no greater date in recent US political history than October 6, 2018, the day Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court by a 50-48 Senate vote. I will never forget that glorious Saturday afternoon, and how I screamed in joy and victory once the tally was done and scrolled through the ecstatic #BeersForBrett hashtag then trending on Twitter, to see so many normal American men express their own joy and relief at having won against such black lies and evil. We owe this moment to many men, but none more so than the indomitable DJT himself.
There are so many other things to note: T spitting in the face of eco-nihilist pieties by withdrawing from the disgusting Paris climate accord; the underrated Betsy DeVos giving some hope to American college kids by reversing the kangaroo court "sexual assault" policies in US universities; and much more. The last two years are, in every way, an embarrassment of riches, but all these -- as important as they are -- are still secondary to the fact of T's mere presence on center stage and all that his difference in kind has signified.
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Lastly, a few words by way of general reflection. There are many posters here and -- no doubt -- many more lurkers who seem convinced that we are on course toward some catastrophe however defined, perhaps the end of western civilization itself, perhaps a civil war in the US, in any case the end of the world as we know it. They talk about "demographics" and imagine that it's destiny; they think they can see what's coming and that unless it is stopped this very second -- unless the wall is built yesterday, or whatever other necessary measures are taken -- it will any moment now be too late. That is the increasingly prevailing spirit in this particular corner of the chattersphere; other corners have their own mechanisms of doom, whether it's "climate change" or "soulless capitalism" or whatever else, but they all come to the same apocalyptic certainties.
To these men, I would simply say this: be a little more modest in the face of an unknown and unknowable future. Unless you have become fabulously wealthy by predicting world events -- and the ability to predict very large and complex outcomes would definitely be worth many zeros after the one -- you should consider the possibility that world history moves in ways that are beyond your or anyone else's ability to encompass and comprehend. The only trend that, over time, has been inexorable is that of mankind extending its control over the material world by advancing our understanding of mathematics and science, and making that growing understanding tangible through technology. This inexorable trend makes it likely that future generations will enjoy a life that is, in most respects, better and full of greater power and reach than ours -- though this of course does not exclude the possibility of reversals and misfortunes along the way. But most catastrophes that you think are inevitable will probably not happen; most trends that you think are inexorable are probably only temporary. Is the US truly headed towards "civil war", or will it become "another Brazil", or an Islamic caliphate, or will there be mandatory SJW reeducation camps for men, or will trannies rule the world? I wouldn't say any of these things are impossible -- well, I guess the last one is -- but I have my doubts any of them will happen. I suppose we will find out in due course.
For what it's worth, my prescription for one and all is a good strong dose of cognitive humility. The world as it is is truly complex, more so than ever before. It does no good to fear this complexity, or to feel so anxious in its face that one attempts to forestall it with certainties that rest on no solid foundation. It is better to shrug one's shoulders and say, I know a few things about the world but I don't know the future; let me delight in what there is and enjoy the spectacle for all it's worth and for as long as I'm privileged to see it. There has never been a better or more interesting time to be alive -- and for as long as one Donald J. Trump is on the scene, there has certainly never been a more entertaining time. Take it all in and, as the man himself likes to say, we'll see what happens.
same old shit, sixes and sevens Shaft...
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