A Grudging Concession About Something Trump Did

Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Pursuer of happiness. Bon vivant. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Ordinary Times. Relapsed Lawyer, admitted to practice law (under his real name) in California and Oregon. There's a Twitter account at @burtlikko, but not used for posting on the general feed anymore. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.

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5 Responses

  1. DavidTC
    Ignored
    says:

    Further, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy is directed to prepare a national strategy to discourage the use of paper straws in non-governmental settings as well.

    It’s weird, I thought we were on some sort of extreme cost-cutting major to reduce the size of the government, but we’re building some sort of policy office to try to convince people what sort of straws they should purchase for themselves or for a business to provide to customers?

    And odd a Republican Administration is doing this, isn’t this exactly the sort of thing conservatives don’t like?

    Yes, I know, it’s utterly pointless to point out the hypocrisy, but I feel at least someone needs to at least write it down for the record, so here my completely pro forma comment about it.Report

  2. Brandon Berg
    Ignored
    says:

    Really? That’s it? I’m far from his number one fan, but if you can’t off the top of your head name several legitimately good policies he’s put into place—among many very bad ones!—then you might have drunk too deeply of the neurotoxic waters of Portland.Report

    • Chris in reply to Brandon Berg
      Ignored
      says:

      What are some good policies?Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Chris
        Ignored
        says:

        The Good:
        1) Tariffs on China.
        2) What he’s done with Israel.
        3) Dismantling DEI and understanding it’s like opposing someone’s religion.

        The Neutral (or with holding judgement):
        1) I’m not going to put paper straw in there because it’s a nothing burger.
        2) I’m also not going to include cozying up to Russia as a bad thing because it looks like that’s going to blow up.
        3) I’m also going to withhold judgement on damage to rule of law because that’s yet to come to a head… but lots of potential on this one.

        The Bad:
        1) Various tariffs for the sake of tariffs.
        2) Mistreating our various allies (this would be a long list btw)
        3) Hiring anti-vac people to head up Health.
        4) General lawlessness and basically being at war with the judicial system.
        5) Hiring people who are incompetent and firing the competent people below them who are needed to carry out policy.
        6) General chaos and unwillingness to use governmental tools in appropriate ways. Rather than Musk’s group we should have a copy of what Gore did as VP.
        7) Getting rid of large amounts of gov competency without any effort to do a cost/value eval on it first (note I would have included bureaucracy reform as a good thing last time)
        8) Apparently taking Russian info war stuff as legit information.
        9) Going serious Tax-Cut and Spend.
        10) General lack of stability. I think he’s suffering from some age related dementia.

        Some of this is chaos of administration transfer, having very new people in their jobs, and a negative relationship with the press.

        However the overall summation is really bad. He’s ripping up decades of international good will, and doing a lot of damage to the gov, and the economy. Whether that also includes rule of law is a work in progress.

        At the moment I’d say he’s probably going to end up the 2nd worst President we’ve ever seen and he’s got an outside shot at #1.Report

        • Burt Likko in reply to Dark Matter
          Ignored
          says:

          Thanks for the suggestions, Dark Matter.

          1. Less broad tariffs on China could be plausibly defensible; however, I’d still be skeptical personally. Free trade is a home setting for me, left over from my youth as a conservative during the Reagan years. These tariffs are going to hurt us more than they do China, they take place simultaneously with an idiotically destructive trade war with our former USMCA partners, and a softer touch with China would be a better idea anyway given that there were already tariffs in place. (Never mind that Trump negotiated the USMCA and I’m old enough to remember when he touted that it would lead to a new golden era of American prosperity; it was, in fact, effectively a rebranding of 2010’s-era NAFTA, and again, free trade is my home setting.)

          2. Hamas are bad guys and I shed zero tears for them. Israel started the Gaza war with the moral high ground. Netanyahu’s government has since forfeited any claim there and that moral territory is now unoccupied. There are no good guys amongst the combatants in the Gaza war. Nevertheless, an honorable peace with Israeli-advantageous terms has been available to Israel for at least half a year now; Netanyahu prefers to be at war because it helps him bolster his domestic political position which in turn helps him avoid personal legal vulnerability. Since even before taking office, Trump has encouraged re-escalation of the war rather than incentivized peace, and that’s what has happened.

          3. If you’re going to accuse DEI advocates of being religious zealots, then I’m one of them. DEI is a good thing and there should be more of it. White people, male people, cisgendered people, heterosexual people, Christian people, and in non-academic settings conservative people face few if any material professional or academic disadvantages, particularly when compared with people from traditionally disempowered and smaller-share demographic groups. I described what the Trump administration has done with equal opportunity laws as “perverse” in the OP, and that was a calculated choice of wording. I can respect that you hold a different opinion and perhaps think what’s going on in that arena is good. But I say what Trump’s done is deplorable.Report

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