Trump scares the Europeans. He doesn’t scare them because he expects them to pay for their own defense. All of his predecessors had the same expectation. He frightens the Europeans because he ignores their rhetoric while mercilessly exposing their true policy and refuses to accept it. They are scared that Trump intends to exact a price from them for their weak-kneed treachery.
Intends to exact a price. That is what Trump’s political enemies really object to about him.
Trump is not a criminal and doesn’t have a past filled with corruption and dirty favors. Thus he is not liable to the universal blackmail that the elite operate under in normal times. He can hurt them and they can’t do anything about it.
The attacks against Trump do reek strongly of projection. The Clintons alone have him, well, trumped when it comes to depravity (human thermidors, Air Epstein, etc.) and corruption (is there no red state AG willing to investigate the Clinton Foundation?). And let’s not even start with Europe, with Sarkozy, Dutroux, etc.
But I think a lot of the reason for the hate is that he is disrupting the established Way of Doing Things. It’s why the typical Trump hater you meet in the wild has a graduate degree. They’ve gone through a long, painful process that society told them was the path to success, and when someone comes along to say that it was stupid and pointless to do that, they become incandescent with rage.
There is no basis for saying a graduate degree is pointless unless your expectation is that you get rewards beyond your productivity, such as political power. In that case, you thought it was a ticket punching exercise from a diploma mill and your best option is politically provided power and perks. That is what may be changing.
While the humanities and most social sciences have turned out multitudes that have little productive human capital and scarcely any skills for acquiring it. The STEM folks have fared better and are not subject to any half-baked group generalizations about their attitude about politics or Trump. My guess is that most humanities and social science graduate degree holders are closely connected to the public sector for compensation. That might have something to do with their leftist bent as well as the Marxist group identity social justice doctrine they were forced to parrot in their studies. Their “work” has little to do with productivity and is compensated by the largely unaccountable political dead weight estate. Not a future growth sector if Trumpism or a variant stays around for a couple of decades. Good bye public sector unions, hello freedom for those on the plantation with a clue.
Death6
Trump is the man. He is doing god’s work to remove America from preeminence without killing us all. ;)
Most of the purpose of NATO is to keep Europe from Russia. There is zero chance Putin will attack Europe. The Crimean stick save was masterfully done and that’s all Putin needs from that fiasco.
Europe and Russia playing nice are a nightmare for American preeminence as the combined industrial power dwarfs both China and America.
Caroline is a treasure of pure spite and hatred. She’s also not that smart and has failed to understand what’s happening.
I have been enjoying the heads exploding since the Helsinki meeting. He was very brave and just told the truth. I worry they might wack him, as he’s off most of their chains.
Death: Yes, we are the most credentialed society in history, and almost all of them are completely unnecessary.
“Europe and Russia playing nice are a nightmare for American preeminence as the combined industrial power dwarfs both China and America.”
Every time you say this it gets funnier.
It was Mika’s dad Zbig who largely formulated the strategic course of America when he drove the dagger of Jihad into the soft underbelly of Russia in Afghanistan and brought down the Soviet Union. He made a point of keeping Russia from Europe for the very reasons I have laid out.
He would be most upset to see his very useful, for America, strategy being destroyed by Trump.
I read that of all of the American generals George Patton was the most feared by the Germans. It’s because they never knew what he was going to do next. Same thing for Trump I think.
“It’s because they never knew what he was going to do next.”
He was hated by his superiors for the same reason…
“drove the dagger of Jihad into the soft underbelly of Russia in Afghanistan”
I guess it was a curving dagger, sort of like a boomerang….Russia’s problems in Afghanistan were ONE of multiple problems leading to the Soviet Union’s fall, but Jihad has caused a few problems for the US and Europe, too, in case you haven’t noticed.
One would have to be be very obtuse to not notice that, among many things that have come back, to bite the original biter. ;)
I’m pretty sure blowback is a word now.
Pen Gun – my recollection is that Estonia is in Europe. The Scandinavian countries seem to think they are part of Europe as well.
I like this one, its simple:
http://annamap.com/europe/europe-map.jpg
Of course Russia is part of Europe too. To be more specific I think Lord Ismay, the first sec gen of NATO, said it best about NATO’s purpose:
“To keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.”
For years Putin has invested in the green movement; Germany bought into it. That may have fallen in place as he wished, but America just moved up to #3 in energy production and only scarcity of pipelines and refineries are holding us back from further advances. I really don’t understand why an economist like Austin Goolsby is under the impression Trump has been soft on Russia. He saw what Reagan did – though this time it was that the nation was essentially a gas station and little else. (Or, given that I’m not an economist, if someone knows why Goolsby makes the arguments he does because I’m missing something, please comment.)
Ginny,
Russia is also apparently stirring the anti-GMO-crops movement: they themselves have apparently banned production & imports of such crops, so they can increase their global market share by spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) about the safety of such crops.
But the most serious attempts to manipulate American politics, IMO, are those perpetrated by China.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/57018.html
It’s so easy to recognize PenGun’s posts with out the ID since the tone of anti-American spite is so obvious.
Trump’s comments at the post-Summit presser were useful as a form of Tom Clancy’s “Canary Trap.” The Trump enemies in the GOP were quickly on the record attacking him because he told the obvious truth. I don;t know Gingrich’s motivation but it was a bit surprising to see him join the claque.
The American intel community is an arm of the Democratic Party and the Deep State. We could see this as far back as the CIA “Team B” conclusion that Iran had ended its nuclear program.
I suspect Tenet’s conclusion that Saddam had an active nuclear program was probably just the usual CIA stupidity but by the Bush hater Iran paper, it was getting pretty obvious that the CIA was becoming the center of Bush opposition.
It was all the way back to the Cold War that Victor Suvorov (
Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun,) defected to the British SIS because he did not trust the CIA. He was a protege of Oleg Penkovsky, the greatest CIA asset of all time who was betrayed to the KGB.
The CIA is now mostly a foreign language newspaper reading bureaucracy, They have not had a successful operation since the Church Committee.
This is my favorite map of Europe
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/345-europes-continental-divide
People on one side face one way, and those on the other face a different way. If the Clash of Cultures/Civilizations explains anything about our current predicaments then this map shows a slice of it as well as any.
Another divide to consider is Hajnal line. Different priorities clearly.
Lord Ismay may have been clever at branding, but there were also some other things keeping Russia out of Europe.
“It’s so easy to recognize PenGun’s posts with out the ID since the tone of anti-American spite is so obvious.”
That’s why I just put my name once per thread. There’s a lot of spite to go around these days, with a lot of reasons. ;)
Good of PenGun to confirm that his spite is a good way to identify him.
His comments are otherwise fact free.
Part of the reason I only post my name once is to get Jonathan to fix this. ;) I think I pointed out why, but hey that’s ‘fact free’. ;)
I have a graduate degree, but I’m old and a military retiree.
I’m pretty danged happy with Mr. Trump.
It’s amazing how much better the organizations that missed the first World Trade Center bombing, the Cole, 9-11, that claimed Saddam was developing nuclear weapons and that Iran wasn’t, have gotten since January 2017.
Apparently the doctrine of infallibility has become accepted dogma and questioning it is now heresy. Trump and all of us should be thankful that burning at the stake has passed out of fashion.