There is a lot of truth in this column:
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joseph Biden are not the stars or antagonists in this tale. Their supporters are.
A blind unconditional love of their leader fuels the energy and action of Trump supporters. They risk their health (maskless rallies), reputation (accusations of racism and sexism) and safety (social media and Antifa harassment) to stand with their hero.
A blind unconditional hatred of President Trump fuels the energy and action of Biden supporters. Their leader’s ideas, policies and resume are irrelevant. Biden is a tool to kill the Trump presidency. Nothing more.
[. . .]
A reliance on hate and an absence of love inevitably spark widespread corruption.
This is my problem with The Resistance, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the far Left and their pervasive anti-American sentiment. There’s no love. It’s all hate.
Hate cannot sustain life, liberty, freedom and a pursuit of happiness.
As much as President Trump’s public behavior and narcissism annoy me, I’ve never questioned his love of America.
Worth reading in full.
Nnnnnh, kinda.
Trump supporters do not blindly love Trump. That’s a myth.
Trump supporters know that the alternative is malevolence, cancellation, socialism, the whole pile of shit that the left wants to impose, right down to Venezuelan style empty grocery shelves. Trump is the only person standing in the way, and every institution in American life is on the other side, including most of the Republicans. A common meme tells it well, a picture of Trump, and words to the effect: “It is not me they hate, it’s you. I’m just in the way.”
Yeah, that line shows he’s not really familiar with Trump supporters in real life.
Similarly, the notion that hatred of Trump breeds corruption is bizarrely backwards. The Dem party is inherently corrupt and has been for generations.
Definitely worth reading in full. No fault to Jonathan but I don’t think the excerpts fully reflect what Jason is driving at.
The power of Love vs. the power of Hate is at stake in this election. Will America elect a candidate no one loves? When the candidate was Hillary Clinton, the answer was no.
It appears that we have now, and now we’ll see what happens.
Chris: It’s a good column, and Whitlock should be much higher profile–he self-sabotaged his career a few years ago by coming out as conservative-ish. But to say that “A blind unconditional love of their leader fuels the energy and action of Trump supporters” isn’t just artistic license, it’s completely and fundamentally wrong.
Gotta echo, does this guy actually know any Trump supporters?
And “risking our health”– some of us are familiar with the simi-randomized trial of non-medical masks across the population, and that it showed no statistical improvement in outcomes and may have actually had negative results.
(Spanish flu, and note that the droplet argument for masking would apply to even the lightest of fashion veils, nevermind the “is that a q-tip or a nurse?” look that also did no good. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18010229/ )
I guess that he’s trying to set things up to be even-handed, but it’s not Trump we love. It’s America. For what she is.
That the other side has to lie, and scream, and pile false accusations on the US… they don’t hate Trump. They hate that he’s in the way of the ultimate example of “spit on the soldier in uniform” performance art.
Showing how brave one is, by doing a thing that is virtually without risk, and will get you praised by your friends.
Yes, I’m giving him license to be poetic.
Fair enough re Whitlock’s “love Trump” generalization. Substitute love of country and his argument about love vs. hate as political motivation becomes stronger, no?
Jonathan: It seems obvious he was going for symmetry, and it’s undeniable that the left hates Trump blindly and unconditionally. So he had to say that the right loves him the same way. Similarly, if you say that Trump supporters love the country unconditionally, you have to then say that his opponents hate it the same way, and that would be too controversial for him, I’m sure.
The overall message he has is correct though. Just do a quick look around the media right now. They are consumed by hate. They’re far angrier than the right, and they’re the ones who “won”.
There are few things quite as angry as a bully when their easy win fights back.
We recognize Trump’s flaws. We KNOW what the Dems want to do, and want none of it.
Similarly, the left having to tell people repeatedly how loving they are, and how much they don’t hate, strongly suggests it is themselves they are trying to convince. I recall going to a fraternity party almost 50 years ago where a few guys over near the keg kept laughing, raising plastic cups, and saying “PARTY!!” I recall thinking that if you have to tell yourself that many times it’s a party, maybe it’s actually not.
I love Jason Whitlock – never read him before but he’s great on Tucker and thoughtful. His perspective always seems new but also just right.
I don’t think he’s right about the unquestioning love. I’m a big defender of Trump but four years ago I was somewhat appalled by his flashy style, his braggadocio, his lack of eloquence, his defense of eminent domain. When he ran his fingers down the flag and kissed it and looked at his audience it struck me as an extreme example of appealing to Americans’ gut in what I assumed was a phony way. Still, of course, he wasn’t Hillary.
But then he became president. And my sympathies went to him, after all, they tended to go to presidents. I have that much of the English respect for hierarchy that generally seems buried but is there. And he was being insulted by people – and that insult was to me, too, for voting for him. How much those early sneers, those Congress critters that stayed away from the inaugural, those pretentious snippy types made some of us feel affection and protection for Trump as he fought back, with humor and confidence and energy, I don’t think they realized.
But yes, I agree, the love is for America. We have a president who seems to understand the best of what we are – he negotiates trade deals that help us but generally help others as well, peace treaties that bind wounds rather than aggravating them. He doesn’t pay for hostages nor does he pay for respect – he thinks America has earned it and deserves it. If it isn’t paid, he doesn’t intend to bow the knee nor pay the ransom to get what is surely the phoniest of respects.
He believes in America – that is true whether it is a respect for religious liberty or for speech or for guns. Our nation is built on the belief that, in the end, the majority of men will make the right choices – we are fallen but not irredeemable. And he understands that – look at how many of the policies he backs are for opening up rather than closing options. God knows what will happen with health care now, but part of the reason he didn’t have a plan was not just that he appeared to (unfortunately) trust that Ryan did, but also because I think he’d argue the best way is not a single, not a government policy – it is the old and proven way that opens medicine like everything else to competition, innovation, responsibility both from patient and doctor. Of course, it is complicated because a catastrophic illness can lay us low as well as impoverish us – but I can’t imagine that competitive insurance companies aren’t better for that than the government. The left keeps saying (as it did with Bush) that he doesn’t have a plan – this is the party of Obamacare and of endless wars and of the public school system. Give me a break.
And so, we are back to Whitlock’s point – Trump’s policies show a love and respect for the citizens of the United States, one implicit in the major choices of our nation’s founding. That is real love – and we get back to Whitlock. In one of his Tucker interviews lately he talked about the difference (he was speaking about minorities and their relation with the parties, but I think it can be generalized to majorities as well) between when others offer “love” – which for the left is a matter of patting themselves on the back and giving you other people’s money and encouraging dependence – and when they offer respect – which he saw as the right’s (and especially policies like Trump’s in terms of taxes, regulations, and education). The first isn’t, fundamentally, love for another but rather preening, the second is primarily respect but from a love for each unique citizen.
Ours is a system that respects its citizens to make choices, that sees man as fallen but redeemable, that accepts that that redemption comes not through external policies but through internal choices. And that comes from assumptions about the nature of man, of is responsibility not just to voice his opinion but not to bully those who disagree with you. And what could be more bullying, show less respect, than a 120,000 dump of Biden votes at 3 a.m. in central Detroit?
Oh, well, I just spent lunch talking about these things – and it is a stimulating if not completely cheerful prospect.
I also think that the tendency here has generally been to follow the science. And for wisdom – well the comments on this thread are full of it and that is the great thing about Chicagoboyz, the great thing about the atmosphere here, but also the great thing about the values Jonathan and Lex began with. These are not Biden’s.
It is not just Trump they hate; it includes anyone who supports him given the choice. I’ve never liked people who are in love with themselves, but I have been an adamant supporter since he showed me his basic values through his actions. He is a fighter and has been the most effective right of center president since Reagan. I cannot think who could have carried this fight as well as he has. While strongly supporting him, I don’t love him or even idolize him. I do love the exceptional qualities of the USA and that means I cannot spare this man because he effectively fights for things that need fighting for. Given the opposition, who could have done it better.
There are many, not in my opinion most, of his enthusiastic supporters who do love him and have a strong emotional attachment to him and I think he to them. I feel this is due to what he has done and the effort he gives. It is conditional and not idealized. The kind of love that does not expect perfection, just effort and results.
The kind of hate that emanates from the left and their useful fellow travelers has no regard for results. It is based on a accepting the characterization of Trump as the personification of evil and bad intensions. Results don’t matter, they are lies at best and his speech is coded violence
Death6
The Dem party is inherently corrupt and has been
for generationssince its inception.The Democrat Party is the go-to choice for criminals (hence the Dems’ desire for felons to vote), junkies (hence the Dems’ desire to legalize all known drugs), perverts (hence the Dems’ support for homosexuality), the mentally ill (hence the Dems’ longstanding support for “care in the community,” “transgenders,” and the “homeless”), layabouts (hence the Dem’s support for generous welfare for the able-bodied who just don’t quite feel like working), and last but not least, communists (who have been at home in the Democrat Party for the last century, and now call the shots in it).
This on top of supporting slavery, then the KKK, then segregation. All in all, an unenviable record indeed.
There are many, not in my opinion most, of his enthusiastic supporters who do love him and have a strong emotional attachment to him and I think he to them. I feel this is due to what he has done and the effort he gives.
Does a man dying of thirst in the desert love a glass of water? America and Americans have been denigrated abroad (i.e., by people who don’t count, but whom we’ve helped. Repeatedly.) and by people who are resident in the U.S., and are Americans in name only.
Trump has been the person whom we’ve awaited for a long time, someone who is full-throated in his love of America, and his determination to do the best for Americans. Not for Europeans, not for Muslims, not for Africans, not for Chinese, not for Canadians, not for Mexicans, not for Iranians, not for Iraqis; they’ve got their own governments to look out for them, or if they don’t, that’s their problem. Until Trump nobody looked out for Americans. We were the world’s chumps who picked up the tab for everything, and were roundly excoriated in return.
Hatred does seem to be the most prized emotion on the Left.Can it be based upon a feeling that they know that they have a invalid philosophy,one that cannot work, and so they must hate those who subscribe to a political/economic philosophy that does?
Really great comments, I’d only add that initially DJT was a media creation. The nonstop barage of snarky, fatuous, vacuous drivel and fabricated accusations drove millions to take his side.
from Ace, about ‘progressives’ who are destroying relationships with friends and relatives for the sin of Wrongthink:
“But another struck me about the progressives in that thread was how happy and self-congratulatory they were for cutting their relatives out of their lives. They seemed to relish their anger and glory in their hatred. They treat them like virtues to be cultivated rather than sins to be repented of.
It reminds of that guy I heard about two, three years ago, who worked himself himself into a frothing rage over Chick-Fil-A’s owner’s defense of traditional marriage. So he got in his car and cruised up to a Chick-Fil-A drive-up window sporting his huge mad-on and started railing at whoever tried to take his order. And we know this because he recorded his abusive behavior on his phone and posted it to social media, and it went viral. But again, why would anyone want others to see such shameful behavior? The guy was *proud* of what he did. He wanted everybody to see it. He was like a church lady showing off her new Easter hat.
I am not saying that conservatives are incapable of hatred. All people are capable of such vices. But progressives have turned vices into virtues which metastasize into habits.”
As far as my unconditional love of Trump, I’m not sure that I even like him. I do respect what he has managed to accomplish despite the obstacles and will regret the lose of what might have come. The best outcome of a Biden victory will be the sort of sullen stasis that described the last six years of the Obamate.
It would require infinitely more regard for the Democratic clique than I posses for me to hate them. Profound, unfathomable contempt tends in that direction without encompassing it.
I am obligated to work with and even, in the case of family, love some Biden voters. There isn’t anything to gain and a lot to lose by being obnoxious. No one, so far, seems willing to challenge me, so I let it lie.
There isn’t going to be a Republican incumbent in ’24 and probably not a Democratic one that anyone will acknowledge. Pense is likely screwed even if Trump manages to prevail, possibly, especially if Trump wins. It will have been eight years of standing in the glare of an outsized personality with very little evidence of his own accomplishments and, to be honest, I hadn’t heard of him before that. This is a large part of the explanation of why VP is so rarely a path to the Presidency. A defeat, counter intuitively, would give him four years to establish himself.
I’m not going to be impressed by any Senator as a possible candidate in ’24. That still leaves about 320,000,900 possibilities. Even cutting it in half to account for Democrats would seemingly allow an adequate field from which to choose several outstanding candidates. Will the Republicans manage to pull it off?
Hatred does seem to be the most prized emotion on the Left. Can it be based upon a feeling that they know that they have a invalid philosophy,one that cannot work, and so they must hate those who subscribe to a political/economic philosophy that does?
It does indeed. They seem to treat hating something or someone as validating themselves as worthwhile people.
My parlor psychoanalysis conjecture for why they do this: it’s because they’re intrinsically broken people, with deep-seated psychological issues (e.g., gnawing envy, low self-esteem, a sense of inadequacy) that make them intensely unhappy. Rather than deal with their internal problems, they project them and their unhappiness onto external phenomena, which basically serve as lightning rods for discharging their tension.
I’ve often wondered exactly what external circumstance would make such people happy? No answer comes to mind; to change metaphors, they seem to be scratching where it doesn’t itch.
So, now what happens to the media? It was contracting before President Trump declared his candidacy; his presidency more or less saved it. Think about it, a significant percentage of media “reporting” was snarky, made up drivel about Trump from every Tom, Dick and Harry who could ride a couch. If Trump withdraws from public life, what will they do? I hope there will be drastic cuts; they brought it upon themselves. OTOH, if Trump continues to play a prominent role, he’ll suck all the air out of the room. Slo and Blo will seem stale and flat.
While I’m sorely disappointed by the direction things seem to be headed, I can hardly imagine how a Democrat under the impression that he was supporting some sort of principal must feel. They have labored mightily and brought forth a slug or, more appropriately, a pair of leaches. The one thing I’m sure of is that at the end of four years they’ll be fat and fit to burst.
I remember back to how at this time in 2018 the Dems had a modest gain in seats that just kept growing as the magnitude of their ballot harvesting became clear, and look at the fraud in Atlanta, and say no one should feel confident in holding the Senate…