Trump Vs. The Insiders: Bluster Vs. Deceit

Trump Vs. The Insiders:  Bluster Vs. Deceit

by

R.E. Prindle

 

We have another interesting unsigned editorial in the 2/16/16 Wall Street Journal.  This one concerns Trump in the post-CBS debate.  Ye Editor is irate but I’m not sure about what.  His is a well-organized essay so while skipping some paragraphs I will comment on each in sequence.  He begins:

By now it is a cliché that Donald Trump can say anything he wants, and his supporters don’t care.  They love him for his attitude and bluster, which has become a proxy for their rage against the political machine.

As Ye Editor dissociates himself from both the Left and Right identifying himself only by the nebulous ‘we’ it must be assumed that he is of a third party identified with the ‘political machine.’  In other words those who pull the strings- the Insiders.

By Trump’s followers I presume he means the great majority of Outsiders.  I say majority because ever poll indicates that the majority of the ‘voters’ oppose every policy of the Insiders by overwhelming numbers.  Trump gives voice, a focus, to the overwhelming objection to the importation of millions of Middle Easterners of the kind of rapists and criminals now infesting Germany and Europe.  Who but Insider perverts relish the idea of rape gangs prowling our city streets.  Fact not fiction, Ye Editor, read your own paper for details in the city of Cologne.

You favor criminal activity of this sort for which we hate you, yes, hate you.  Trump’s bluster as you call it has little appeal for us.  It’s his sanity, his good sense rejecting all your criminal proposals that, apparently, only benefit you.

…someone has to point out how the GOP…frontrunner has adopted the political left’s world view on fundamental questions- including blatant distortion of fact.

Neither Trump nor any of us have adopted a leftist world view.  If their views coincide with ours in any way the truth is they have found the good sense to follow our enlightened lead.

Take his full throated endorsement of the conspiracy theory that the George W. Bush Administration deliberately lied to get the US into the Iraq war.  “You call it what you want.  I wanna tell you.  They lied.”  Mr. Trump replied to a question by CBS moderator John Dickerson.  “They said there were weapons of mass destruction.  There were none.  And they knew there were none.  There were no weapons of mass destruction.”

In point of fact no weapons of mass destruction were ever found so I suppose Ye Editor objects to Trump’s claim that Bush was deluded.  If so, then Bush projected his delusion as a fact that deceived a large part of the electorate.  I decline to get into an argument of whether this was deliberate or just an honest mistake.  Hey, we all make trillion dollar mistakes that cost thousands of lives and disrupt millions of others.  It happens.

However, Ye Editor’s memory is a bit shaky or else he is delusional himself.  The only thing that saved Bush from being the worst president ever is his successor Boy Obama.  What a one-two punch that has been.  Can Trump be worse than that?  He will really have to work at it and I don’t think he has that much talent.

What was Bush’s comment as he downed the air fleet of the country stranding tens of thousands of travelers while shutting down the country for four long days?:  Aw, forget those buildings and go out and shop.  Go out and shop?  Can any president have as contemptible a response to such an attack on the country by enemy aliens as that?  And you, Editor, have the nerve to object to Trump?

It’s fair if the New York businessman wants to tout his opposition to the Iraq war way back when, though he’d soon learn in the Oval Office that Presidents must often make decisions based on imperfect intelligence….But peddling false conspiracy theories ought to be disqualifying in a candidate because it corrodes public trust in democracy.

 

Does Ye Editor imply that we have full and true disclosure of what happened in the years surrounding 9/11 as well as 9/11 itself?  Is there no room for further investigation  of what is actually an unsettled question?  Is he saying:  Shut up and take our word for it or else?  Fie, fie for shame Ye Editor.  Perhaps that stance disqualifies you from being an editor.  Nor does questioning a governments excuses for itself constitute a corrosion of public trust and if it did, so what?  If anything the ability to question the government should strengthen democracy.  Don’t you think?

And then here comes the greatest howler that Ye Editor could possibly conceive:

We have enough respect for voters to appreciate that they support Mr. Trump for rational reasons.

 

Yes, yes, this contradicts your opening sentence  but go on:

(Trump’s) willingness to indulge the most crackpot left-wing conspiracy theory shows the tremendous risks Republicans would be taking if they made him their standard bearer.

 

Well, so we the rational voters of whom you are speaking for an unidentified ‘we’ have a modicum of respect for voting irrationally for a crackpot?  How do you reconcile that?

In point of fact Donald Trump qualifies as the voice of reason compared to the evil nonsense of a cabal which Editor you represent that is manipulating society for its own ends behind the scenes.

It is for that reason that we voters like Trump not his ‘bluster.’