Wednesday, March 01, 2017

1000 Words

It's Bernie Sanders, listening to Trump's kinda State of the Union address last night with evident discomfort:

Not happy, Bob
I didn't watch the speech, but I've looked at the transcript. From what I understand, Trump did not deviate much from the speech as written. To a certain extent, it mirrors much of what we've heard from his predecessors. A few of the proposals caught my eye, including this one:
I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American Victims. The office is called VOICE --- Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests.
It's a useless office, but it's an effective shiv. There were more than a few of those in the speech. Another:
Remember when you were told that you could keep your doctor, and keep your plan?
We now know that all of those promises have been broken.
And another:
 My job is not to represent the world. My job is to represent the United States of America. 
If Trump wants to accomplish anything, he needs to remind the country why he won the election. On that score, here's Victor Davis Hanson:
Urban elites seldom experience the full and often negative consequences of their own ideologies. And identifying people first by race, tribe or gender — by their allegiance to their appearance rather than to the content of their characters — has rarely led anywhere but to tribalism and eventual sectarian violence.

The result was that when Trump, the outsider without political experience, appeared as a hammer, rural America apparently was more than happy to throw him into the glass of the bicoastal establishment, without worrying too much about the shards that scattered.
Trump was at the podium last night because he is the tribune of people who don't have the luxury of throwing out 1000 words to express their concerns. It may not end well, but it's still important to understand why he, and not Hillary Clinton, is now Leader of the Free World.

1 comment:

Bike Bubba said...

My favorite part of the "factcheck" response is where the Washington Post/Glenn Kessler tried to argue that illegal immigration does not in fact cost billions by appealing to a report that attempted to quantify the overall cost of all immigration. And seriously, if indeed 87% or something of illegals receive welfare benefits, and huge portions have kids in school and such, it's hard to argue that it's not costing the country a serious chunk of change--especially given that they're taking jobs that otherwise native-born unskilled workers might have had.