The Trump Trolley Problem
Photo by Voice of America 9Public Domain0
The Trump Trolley Problem: You either drive the train off the cliff or never get on it in the first place.
The Trump Trolley Problem is rather basic, as the first sentence makes pretty clear once you know it is about former president Donald J. Trump. The man is an egomaniac supreme who treats anyone who even slightly criticizes him as if they killed his dog in front of him. As it is becoming increasingly obvious by how desperate lack of Twitter access is making Trump, he may be dumb enough to run in 2024. Because he’s an idiot. I don’t wish to waste my breath explaining how stupid that would be. It is more obvious to me than how awesome Ninja Sex Party is.
The man has a lot of influence over the base of the Republican Party, more than Dirty Harry had over the modern action movie, in a way that has every elected Republican groveling. Most elected Republicans lack nerve. They are spineless, gutless, and nutless. Mercury, rather than steel, would describe their spines. Even those who are free to criticize Trump endlessly with virtually zero electoral backlash, refuse. Mitt Romney, a man who lacked the nerve to let his specifically chosen veep pick be the man that impressed him so (a man he chose against the advice of the idiots that ran his campaign who would later become The Lincoln Project grifters,) knows as the first Mormon major party presidential candidate, he will never lose an election in Utah. He found his nerve, but what took him so long?
If an elected Republican is criticizing Trump in stark terms, there are only a few reasons: They truly believe it, they know they have zero future in Republican national politics, or they think it’ll get them a plum gig once they retire. Sometimes, all three are true. I think this is likely the case for Charlie Dent. A former Congressman from Pennsylvania, he essentially lost it when Trump won in 2016.
This was especially painful seeing as Dent was one of Giuliani’s most visible supporters in 2008. It had to hurt. He retired and resigned early prior to the 2018 midterms. He’s now a talking head for CNN or whatever. I will always respect the man for going out on a limb against Trump as early as he did. He definitely didn’t have to do that.
The three rules I established in the previous paragraph are why the sour grapes from Justin Amash are crocodile tears. You waited until you were no longer interested in being in elected office to let your true feelings bubble to the surface. Coward. Liz Cheney has more balls than you, good sir.
The key when it comes to Trump is never getting on the Trump Train in the first place. Because, once you do, you have no choice but to go off the cliff with him in the conductor’s seat. He will make you regret it eventually. He decides when you get off. Either way, you won’t enjoy how you hit the ground.
Trump has market capture over the Republican electorate for at least one more election cycle. Let’s hope he will be satisfied being kingmaker in 2024. Ron DeSantis is the obvious choice from where I sit right now. He can unite the tribes of cats (I may be mixing metaphors) that make up the Republican base. Trump could never do that, but he could win 30% in a crowded primary. If Trump runs, we’ll probably get a repeat of the 2016 Democrat primary. One obvious winner, by hook or crook, and the idiot backbencher who almost stole their crown. That fractures the base and leads to inevitable defeat in the general. Calling balls and strikes, how I sees them, brophalom.
It’s “Democratic.”Report
I keep seeing these sorts of essays that have as their assumed position that Trump is an outlier, a hostile interloper to the Republican Party and only the weakness of the quisling elected Republicans allows him to remain.
This has never been true. Trump IS the heart and soul of the Republican Party now, and there are hundreds, thousands of mini-Trumps in legislatures and statehouses and Congress, supported by about 70 million voters.
The Frums, the Frenchs, the Bulwark crew, the reasonable moderate Republicans here at OT are just…irrelevant. Their opinions and actions aren’t good or bad, just impotent to have any effect on outcomes.Report
Here here. Trump is the LATEST symptom not the disease. Looking at Republican Party legislation over the last 40 years its always been clear they want White, Male, Conservative Rich rule, and they have been and are happy to “other” to achieve that end. Trump gave them permission to be nakedly open about it.
His political demise won’t happen until at least 2024, and even then the floodgates won’t close. Too many state legislatures and state houses are in hard right Republican hands for this to just vanish.Report
Haidt.Report
U.K. Far Right, Lifted by Trump, Now Turns to Russia
Now that Mr. Trump is out of office and the American money is apparently drying up, Mr. Robinson and some other far-right figures are turning to Moscow. Mr. Robinson, who is fighting a potentially costly libel case in London this week, did a media tour of Russia last year but three associates told The New York Times that part of his agenda was kept secret — to seek accounts with Russian banks.
“Why else would you visit Russia?” said Andrew Edge, a former senior figure in the English Defence League and another far-right group, Britain First, who said that he discussed moving money to Russian banks with Mr. Robinson and Britain First’s leader, Paul Golding.
In many ways, Mr. Robinson is now useful to the Kremlin — which has often encouraged fringe political figures who might destabilize Western democracies — for the same reasons he was welcome in Mr. Trump’s Washington.
Its very true, I don’t understand this.
Which moral foundation involves collaborating with a hostile foreign power to destabilize our nation?Report
Oh please. I’m drawing conclusions on 40 years of actions by Republican politicians. Their motivations and expected outcomes are crystal clear. and 70 Million Americans support them.
If you believe otherwise you need to explain why.Report
Well, you just don’t understand conservatives.
Like here:
“Every time I look at these videos, it just chokes me up,” federal Judge Emmet Sullivan said at a recent court hearing, interrupting prosecutors as they made their case against the five Capitol rioters.
Sullivan was reacting to harrowing footage of three police officers wading into the crowd to save a pro-Trump rioter who was trampled — with the police only to be stripped of their protective gear by other members of the mob, dragged and attacked with crutches, flagpoles, batons and bare hands.
See, liberals rank very low on the “Respect Authority” scale but very high on the “Harm” scale, so of course this seems like an outrage.Report
If it were just a guy online who said you didn’t get it, or if it were just a social scientist who did a study indicating why you might not get it with accompanying research showing that people like you often don’t get it, and if the internet weren’t filled with people explaining conservatism in ways that differ from how you perceive it, and if the only people who perceive it the same way you do also fit the social scientist’s category of people who don’t get it, and I’m sorry I lost track of that sentence, but something something unfalsifiable something something missing the point.Report
Let’s take a vote. Do we prefer: (a) name-dropping or (b) Pinky’s own explanations?Report
Pinky has become like George Taylor – he thinks he’s tossing bombs into the liberals that will blow us up but good, all the while failing to see the fizzled fuses and the tiny puff of useless smoke that comes with it.Report
I’m puzzled by what you think you are doing with this whole “you don’t understand conservatives” schtick.
Like, if we somehow did “get conservatives “, would we think differently of them?
We would have less contempt for their behavior, and proposals, the bills they pass, the outrageous abuses they defend?Report
I’m just awfully frustrated by the libsplaining threads lately. I have for years explained the conservative approach to problems and been told “no, you don’t understand, it’s really all about isms”. The repetition of it is getting to me, and I’m confused by how it’s not getting to you. I mean, even if you think your analysis is correct, isn’t it boring?
I’m also a bit frustrated at the number of interesting issues that haven’t gotten articles lately. One of the reasons I frequent this site is to read the liberal perspective on different issues. But oh, look, here’s another Trump Train article. I’ve enjoyed the “read it yourself” primary document series, but there are things that are going on that I’m just not hearing about here. The fact that it’s the same dozen liberal voices on the Trump Train thread makes it stand out all the more.Report
Write them up, would be happy to post them and expand the range.Report
Rereading Haidt in some of his shorter forms this afternoon, I think you and many other conservatives are both too smug about what he says, and entirely distracted by the semantic choices he makes.
Take the term “understand.” Intellectually I understand that conservatives are willing to sacrifice individuals (particularly poor individuals) to preserve order and institutions. Intellectually I understand that conservatives prize group loyalty about most other things. Intellectually I understand that conservatives believe in strong authority figures who shouldn’t be questioned.
I understand all that. I grok it. It “makes sense” as an intellectual construct.
I disagree with much of it, and more importantly I disagree with the policies being pursued by Republican politicians to allegedly make there moral foundations real in America. The deference to authority and the desire for social order above all things is why my black nephew has a far greater chance of dying at the hands of a cop in America today then my white sons. The splitting of people into in and out groups (which is not a conservative approach IMHO) and the defense of the in-group to the exclusion of all others is the basis for modern institutional racism, which multitudes of studies have shown to have significant negative economic and psychological impacts on WHITES to say nothing of the semi-indentured economic slavery many blacks still find themselves in.
As to conservatives alleged rooting in Sanctity – give the number of Republican politicians credibly accused of sexual and marital impropriety I think conservatives need to shut the hell up. Women building life long emotional bonds with other women and raising children in that loving secure relationship are not a threat to white “Christian” marriage. The hypocrisy of thrice married philandering politicians like Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump is such a threat.
So I get it. I understand it. I grok it.
I have no sympathy for it, little empathy, and given how it is working out form a real world data perspective – I hope it fails miserably.
But I very much understand it.Report
Every Republican in Congress and state office continues to profess loyalty to Trump. Each would be contender for 2024 tries to posit himself as Trump’s true heir.Report
I think this is unfair to Justin Amash. He criticized Trump while he was still in office and lost his seat as a direct result of that.Report
Mitt Romney, a man who lacked the nerve to let his specifically chosen veep pick be the man that impressed him so
I’m confused: did Mitt prefer someone else to Paul Ryan?Report