On Donald Trump, Joe Biden, free enterprise, an American airman, the rez, the Unabomber, James G. Watt, and more
In the Trump years, people have often said, “LOL, nothing matters.” Donald Trump can do anything, say anything — and his support remains basically the same. He himself said, during the 2016 campaign, that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and his supporters would stick with him.
The other day, I was wondering, “Could the latest indictment actually make a dent?” In response, a reader sent me a column from the Seattle Times by Danny Westneat. It is headed “Does nothing matter? Trump support in WA hasn’t budged.”
Trump’s popularity throughout the country has remained amazingly steady — from 2016 to the present. So has his unpopularity, I suppose. The country seems frozen in place. I remember the days after Jan. 6. Some Republicans were shocked, and back on their heels. They even murmured some criticisms of Trump. But, in short order, the wagons re-circled, as they do.
• Bill Barr, the former attorney general, was quite interesting, in conversation with Robert Costa. Barr said, “He’s like a defiant nine-year-old kid who’s always pushing the glass toward the edge of the table, defying his parents to stop him from doing it.” Barr was speaking of Trump. He continued, “It’s a means of self- assertion and exerting his dominance over other people. And he’s a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country’s.”
Barr concluded, “Our country can’t be a therapy session for a troubled man.”
Yes. To a large extent, the Republican Party and the conservative movement have acted as a kind of support group for Donald Trump — but not a good support group, because they have not been willing to tell him the truth and hold him to account.
• Another former Trump cabinet member, Mark Esper, spoke with Jake Tapper. A headline about this conversation reads, “Former Trump Defense secretary brands him a security threat.” (Article here.) Of Trump’s behavior in the documents case, Esper said, “It’s just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation’s security at risk.”
When he was in office, some people jibed that Esper was “Yesper” — a yes-man. Trump, among others, chortled over this. He’s sure no yes-man now, and I doubt he ever was.
• Some news concerning Jan. 6: “Man who told jurors he had ‘fun’ at the Capitol riot is sentenced to 6 years in prison.” (Article here.) Maybe the “fun” has now ended. But are there pardons coming, if the White House is back in Republican hands after the ’24 election?
No one can say our politics is dull. And happy is the land whose politics — democratic politics — is dull.
• It’s getting late — very late — but think of this: Democrats have not yet nominated President Biden for a second term. And, if I were the Democrats — the Democrats collectively — I would have a hard think about that. Is he up to the rigors of another campaign and another term? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. But a refusal to think hard about this is something of a dereliction. In fact, a major one.
• Doug Ducey has just stepped down as governor of Arizona, after two terms. He is a Republican. It has just been announced that he will be the CEO of Citizens for Free Enterprise, which is launching a “new national advocacy effort,” the group says. The effort will focus on — what else? “The promotion and preservation of the free enterprise system.”
In its mission statement, the group says,
The Free Enterprise System has proven to be the single most powerful engine of prosperity. It has raised the standard of living for more people than any economic paradigm in human history and has catalyzed the American entrepreneurial spirit to spur innovation that has reshaped the world.
A little more:
We believe that free enterprise is the bedrock of a prosperous society, enabling economic growth, job creation, and the betterment of people’s lives. The core tenets of the free enterprise system are under attack and our mission is to be the voice for those who want the next generation of Americans to have more opportunity.
Good, good. I’m glad Ducey is involved in this. The American Right, and the Republican Party, have been increasingly distant from free enterprise, as populism and governmental paternalism hold sway. Economic freedom, like freedom in general, needs all the help it can get.
• A little language? I’m not crazy about “core tenets” (among other things). A tenet, it seems to me, is by definition “core.”
• John Bolton has penned an excellent article titled “America’s one-nation military.” He quotes the Air Force general Charles Q. Brown, who is Biden’s nominee to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Said Brown, “When I’m flying, I put my helmet on, my visor down, my mask up. You don’t know who I am — whether I’m African American, Asian American, Hispanic, white, male, or female. You just know I’m an American airman, kicking your butt.”
Right on.
• A quite interesting news report, I thought:
When Esmita Spudes Bidari was a young girl in Nepal, she dreamed of being in the military, but that wasn’t a real option in her country.
Last week, she raised her right hand and took the oath to join the U.S. Army Reserves, thanks in part to a recruiter in Dallas who also is Nepalese and reached out to her through an online group.
Bidari, who heads to basic training in August, is just the latest in a growing number of legal migrants enlisting in the U.S. military as it more aggressively seeks out immigrants, offering a fast track to citizenship to those who sign up.
The report continues,
Struggling to overcome recruiting shortfalls, the Army and the Air Force have bolstered their marketing to entice legal residents to enlist, putting out pamphlets, working social media and broadening their outreach, particularly in inner cities.
Sounds to me like a happy development, for all of us.
• Unhappy, in my opinion, was a recent Supreme Court ruling, concerning the Indian Child Welfare Act. In his column, George F. Will was scalding, just scalding, about it. This column was a stirring read, for me. There are people in this world who would rather an Indian child be abused or killed in an Indian family than thrive in an adoptive, non-Indian one.
I could spit blood.
• Did you see this puppy? “Passengers on a Ryanair flight from Italy to Tel Aviv were shocked after a flight attendant repeatedly described their final destination as Palestine.” Yup. She did it “in both Italian and English.”
Check your politics at the plane door, or something like that? Especially if you have a mic in your hand?
• Hmmm . . .
A detailed lawsuit filed by a former Apex City Councilman claims that North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland County) started an affair with his wife and engaged in group sex with other people seeking political favor.
I’m thinking the Speaker is a shoo-in for reelection. Probably higher office, too, given our current environment.
(For that article, go here.)
• This takes me back — I’ll explain in a moment:
Charlie Kirk: "I'm going through my refrigerator and I'm starting to ask the question: Was this ketchup bottle woke? Is this mustard? I mean, literally." pic.twitter.com/ncSHJR12v3
— Media Matters (@mmfa) June 13, 2023
One of the reasons I became a conservative, way back, is that the Left made a political issue of everything. There could be no private, apolitical sphere. The Left had a slogan: “The personal is political.” Everything was political, from the food you ate, to the music you listened to, to the clothes you wore, to the friends you had. I said, “Nuts to that,” and I still do.
Beware “totalism,” as Bill Buckley would say. Beware being a 24/7 ideologue or partisan. I see it on the right today as much as I ever did on the left.
• I would like to say something about the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who just died. He was an intellectual who hated modern society. He hated it so much, he lashed out at it, in the form of making bombs and murdering people. He killed three people and injured 23.
He is admired by political extremists on left and right, who see him as some kind of troubled prophet and sage. I see him as merely another in a long, long line: bookish political extremists who believe they are entitled to kill and hurt other people.
Beware this type, always beware.
• James G. Watt has died, at 85. Reagan’s first interior secretary. Controversial guy. Always shootin’ his mouth off, and puttin’ his foot in it. Reagan once gave him a model of a foot — plaster — with a bullet hole in it.
Watt had some greatest hits, and I could recite most of them. For instance, he said of a certain commission, “We have every kind of mix you can have. I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews, and a cripple. And we have talent.”
Crude, very crude. But was he making some sort of comment on quota-ism?
He also said, “If you want an example of the failure of socialism, don’t go to Russia, come to America and go to the Indian reservations.” He added that “every social problem” on the reservations “is exaggerated because of socialistic government policies.”
You know, I have time for such arguments.
But I bet you’re out of time, and I thank you for joining me. Catch you soon.
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