Culture

More on where Trump came from.

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There is increasing panic among the GOPe about the possibility that Trump could win the nomination. The “Anyone But Trump” fixation is obsessing the usual suspects.

Megan McArdle: As I see it, there are basically three strategies you can follow:

Anyone but Trump: It doesn’t matter, as long as you vote against Trump. Democrats in open primary states can play, too.
Vote the leader: Pick the winner in your state, and force the nomination selection to the convention.
Attempt to generate an actual alternative front-runner by voting for the national poll leader, or the most plausible candidate — probably Marco Rubio, given that he seems to have the most support from the highest number of GOP coalitions, but possibly Ted Cruz, since he appears to be the next most appealing to Trump voters.
I’ll just start by asking: Which of these would someone follow if their main priority is to defeat Trump? Or am I thinking about it all wrong?

Sean Trende: No, I think you have it basically right. I actually think that, for now, their best chance lies behind Door No. 2.

Why are the elites so obsessed with keeping Trump away from the levers of power ? This is not limited to the USA. Germany is having its own voter revolt.

The anti-immigrant AFD – Alternative for Germany – party has scored massive gains in municipal weekend elections which reflect growing public anger at the refugee policies of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The polls for councils in the state of Hesse saw the AFD make significant inroads on the two main established parties – Merkel’s conservative CDU and the centre-left SPD – to come in third with 13.2 percent of the vote, knocking the environmental Greens into fourth place.
Frankfurt CDU politician Markus Frank said: ‘The preliminary result of the AfD is frightening. I had expected a maximum five percent.’

Where does this voter anger come from ?

Maybe it is one manifestation of the Principle Agent Problem.

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A Preference Cascade is Forming.

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trump

Glenn Reynolds has known about this for a long time.

“This illustrates, in a mild way, the reason why totalitarian regimes collapse so suddenly. (Click here for a more complex analysis of this and related
issues). Such regimes have little legitimacy, but they spend a lot of effort making sure that citizens don’t realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. If the secret police and the censors are doing their job, 99% of the populace can hate the regime and be ready to revolt against it – but no revolt will occur because no one realizes that everyone else feels the same way.

Peggy Noonan has written about it several times.

But in my experience any nonpolitical person on the street, when asked who will win, not only knows but gets a look as if you’re teasing him. Trump, they say.

I had such a conversation again Tuesday with a friend who repairs shoes in a shop on Lexington Avenue. Jimmy asked me, conversationally, what was going to happen. I deflected and asked who he thinks is going to win. “Troomp!” He’s a very nice man, an elderly, old-school Italian-American, but I saw impatience flick across his face: Aren’t you supposed to know these things?

In America now only normal people are capable of seeing the obvious.

This is something I have been looking at for a while.

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Reflections on Victimhood becoming Entitlement – The Tenth Commandment

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I like both Haidt and Foster’s remarks. This is a comment that got out of hand.

I would observe that it isn’t like we didn’t know that we hadn’t been warned. Victimization is of course, more common in a culture of feelings than of thought, of sentimentality than sense. It is old in close knit communities where others can be expected to sympathize (think of the power of the younger, weaker child over an older, stronger sibling in making a case to a parent). I suspect that in the past it has more often characterized a small, closely knit group and the wielders of the power were probably more often women (think especially mothers). The boldness with which women project the claim today probably comes from an assurance that counters the value of the claim itself; we are out of the closet in terms of competitive will but we’ve lost the skill to wield it subtly. As a comment observes, this 21st century feminization of American culture enriches Oprah. But on the founders’ ships, embarking on an adventure in itself signaling virtue, it might have been more powerful if the leaders hadn’t been so aware of human nature and condemned it so clearly.

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“re: Seth Barrett Tillman responding to President Adam Falk, Williams College: the Allure of Forbidden Fruit”

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Seth Barrett Tillman responds to the president of Williams College:

Dear President Falk,
 
I read your February 18, 2016 letter to the Williams Community. I do not understand it. You don’t quote, link to, point to, or even summarize anything Derbyshire said or wrote. So the reader has no way to understand precisely what he said or wrote that crossed any “line” or even, when he said or wrote you allege constitutes hate speech. How is the reader supposed to understand your letter?

Read the whole thing.

Jonathan adds:

1) President Falk’s statement that “Free speech is a value I hold in extremely high regard” sounds a lot like “Your call is very important to us”.

2) Hate speech is speech. The reason why no one who expresses concern about “hate speech” ever mentions such a thing as “love speech” is that it’s obvious that speech that no one objects to requires no protection. The term “hate speech” is verbal camouflage used to obfuscate anti-free-speech arguments.