Trump

Random Thoughts (7): Trump, Canada, and the Monroe Doctrine

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One: A Politician’s DNA

A long time ago, I was told that you can trace a politician’s MO back to their formative years. Joe Biden was a senator for 36 years, since he was 30, and that left an indelible mark on his soul. He thinks that talk and spending money equal results. Also don’t try to hold him personally accountable or he’ll treat you like he treated his legislative staff for all those years.

Obama? He’s a con man, telling you what you wanted to hear. You can tell me that just makes him a politician, but he was doing it long before he became one. Everybody keeps talking how awesome that speech was at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that launched his national career; I’m still waiting for that guy to be president.

Donald Trump? He’s still at heart the real estate developer, the man who wrote “The Art of the Deal” and who is willing to negotiate with just about anyone. When you negotiate you look to persuade, you look for leverage, and you look to expand your options by forcing things onto the table.

You might think Trump’s stated desire to buy Greenland is ludicrous, but it seems people (including Greenlanders) are open to talk about changing things up. For someone looking to cut a deal, the best answer to a proposal is “yes” and the second best answer is “no” because then they are listening. The worst answer is to be ignored. Trump is not the type of man to be ignored.

For the past five years, since the last time Trump brought up Greenland, our political betters have spent very little time talking about that very strategic piece of real estate. Now everyone is talking about it and what its future is. Go ahead and mock him, but he knows how to cut deals and right now he’s got people talking about what he wants. That’s winning. Dial me up some more.

Maybe he knows something the DC establishment doesn’t.

My prediction? Greenland independence and a Compact of Free Association with the US.

Two: The Return of the Monroe Doctrine

Trump’s (arguably) three most “outrageous” comments since his re-election have to do with Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. What do they all have in common? They are all in the Western Hemisphere, they are all strategically vital, and they are all under some form of foreign influence that’s inimical to American interests. The Chinese are nosing around Greenland and making offers, the Chinese are acquiring and building port facilities around the Canal, and Canada has done diddly about protecting its Arctic coastline from the Russians.

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Thiel on the Election and the Triumph of the Counter-Elites

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Bari Weiss interviews Peter Thiel.  There’s a two-hour video and, below it, an edited transcript.

Formalism and Credentialism: Reversing the Trend?

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The Trump victory represents in significant part a popular reaction against the excesses of credentialism.  I’m remembering a 2018 post at the Federalist:  Our Culture War Is Between People Who Get Results And Empty Suits With Pristine Credentials….Donald Trump declines the authority of the cultural sectors that most assertively claim it. That’s  the real conflict going on.

The post reminded me of an interchange that took place between Picasso and Matisse as the German Army advanced through France in 1940.  Matisse was shocked to learn that the enemy had already reached Reims.  “But what about our generals?” asked Matisse. “What are they doing?”

Picasso’s response: “Well, there you have it, my friend. It’s the Ecole des Beaux-Arts”…ie, formalists who had learned one set of rules and were not interested in considering deviations from same.

It was an astute remark, and it fits very well with the observations of Andre Beaufre, who before the invasion had been a young captain on the French General Staff. Although he had initially been thrilled to be placed among this elevated circle…

I saw very quickly that our seniors were primarily concerned with forms of drafting. Every memorandum had to be perfect, written in a concise, impersonal style, and conforming to a logical and faultless plan but so abstract that it had to be read several times before one could find out what it was about… “I have the honour to inform you that I have decided…I envisage…I attach some importance to the fact that…” Actually no one decided more than the barest minimum, and what indeed was decided was pretty trivial.

The consequences of that approach became clear in May 1940.

In addition to the formalism that Picasso hypothesized (and Beaufre observed) on the French General Staff, the civilian side of the French government was highly credential-oriented.  From the linked article:

In the first days of July, 1940, the American diplomat Robert Murphy took up his duties as the  charge d’affaires at the new U.S. embassy in Vichy, France. Coming from his recent post in Paris, he was as impressed as he expected to be by the quality of the Vichy mandarinate, a highly credentialed class of sophisticated officials who were “products of the most rigorous education and curricula in any public administration in the world.”

As the historian Robert Paxton would write, French officials were “the elite of the elite, selected through a daunting series of relentless examinations for which one prepared at expensive private schools.” In July 1940, the elite of the elite governed the remains of their broken nation, a few days after Adolf Hitler toured Paris as its conqueror.  Credentials were the key to holding public office, but not the key to success at the country’s business.

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Those Assertions About Trump’s “Darkness”

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A Financial Times headline today refers to “Trump’s dark campaign.” This is not surprising coming from the FT, but even the WSJ today refers to Trump’s “dark pitch.” If one wants to look for Darkness, I’d suggest that it can be found in the rants of the Harris campaign and Democrats in general against Trump and especially against his supporters: ‘Fascists’…’garbage’…’anti-American’. I also see plenty of darkness in the ideology and policies of the Democratic Party…the divisive obsession with race/ethnicity…the casting of blame rather than solving problems, as with the blaming of grocery prices on ‘price gouging’ rather than government-caused inflation…the strange Democrat affinity with the Iranian regime…the tolerance of anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence on campuses and elsewhere…plenty of darkness there.

This video by a celebrity Harris promoter certainly sounds to me like a clear threat against Trump supporters. More darkness.

I haven’t personally attended any of Trump’s rallies, but those who have–such as this foreign student, who attended both Trump and Harris rallies–generally report an atmosphere which is positive rather than negative, and welcoming rather than hostile.

As an example of Trump’s ‘darkness’, the WSJ quotes from a rally speech in which he referred to ‘fighting against the most sinister and corrupt forces on earth.’ I wouldn’t have said it exactly that way, but there is no question that America is under threat by some trends that, if not interrupted and reversed, will destroy our society. And these trends are all heavily pushed by the Democratic Party and groups closely associated with it.  I’ve discussed these trends in my post Vectors of Societal Destruction–and the Growing Pushback Against Them.

Hopefully, the pushback will be strong enough to interrupt and reverse these trends before it is too late.

The Election, 2024

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Personally, I’m voting for Trump and for Republicans generally.  My issues include:

The overwhelming importance of free speech, which is under pervasive and increasing Democrat attack (the censorship pressures during Covid and the 2020 election were only the tip of the iceberg)…the strange Democrat affinity for the Iranian regime, the failure to stop Houthi depredations on shipping, and the undercutting of Israel’s self-defense (had Harris had her way about Rafah, Sinwar would still be alive)…the spread of anti-Semitism on ‘elite’ college campuses, including interference with Jewish students attending class, and the Administration’s failure to do anything substantive to address this…the chaos resulting from deliberate failure to enforce the border laws (done obviously for electoral reasons)…Democrat failure to take seriously the Chinese challenge and supply-chain dependency…Harris blaming inflation on ‘price-gouging’ and ‘greed’ while ignoring the effects of spending and money supply.

The dismal performance of much of the public education system, which is condemning millions to virtual innumeracy and illiteracy, while being protected from competition and challenge by the Democrat-affiliated teachers unions…A threat to innovation in the form of economic policies centered around subsidies toward favored industries and companies rather than addressing structural problems; also, the proposal to tax unrealized gains. Energy policies which are unrealistically and harmfully anti-fossil-fuel. Overall, the increasing Democrat orientation toward reengineering the entire society from the top down, which is entirely contrary to the spirit that has made America successful and free.

I think Trump is a problem-solver and a creative thinker, he has a lot of what Michael Gibson of 1517 fund refers to as Polytropos, a Greek word that was used to describe Odysseus and which means, basically ‘will get it done somehow.’ There are obviously plenty of things about the man that I wish were different, but as Bill Ackman pointed out, an election is not like a marriage or a business partnership where you have a whole universe of people to choose from–in this election, you choose from two. In my own view, Trump is the better choice by a wide margin.