Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on. According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing "25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad" and 51% of those polled, "agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah." Shariah authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won't convert, beheadings and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women.I have a few questions, to wit:
- How would we institute a total and complete shutdown? Please be specific.
- Have we identified the membership of "our country's representatives?"
- The poll cited is an online poll. Are we confident enough about the methodology to believe that it actually represents the opinions of those it purports to represent?
Will Trump's proposal come to pass? It seems unlikely to me, even if Trump is elected president. My guess is Trump is attempting to move the Overton Window regarding immigration generally in the long term. In the immediate term, he is also attempting to get denunciations of his proposal from his opponents. They have all obliged.
I have long championed Eric Hoffer's midcentury book The True Believer. Hoffer makes the distinction between the Man of Words and the Man of Action. Trump has positioned himself as the Man of Action, but is he actually a Man of Words?
"Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance...Trump's pitch, at bottom, is that he can get things done -- a Man of Action. At the same time, he is one of the most gifted communicators I have ever seen. The moment is right for someone like Trump to emerge. The question for the electorate is this -- do you trust what he's telling you?
"The preliminary work of undermining existing institutions, of familiarizing the masses with the idea of change, and of creating a receptivity to a new faith, can be done only by men who are, first and foremost, talkers or writers and are recognized as such by all. As long as the existing order functions in a more or less orderly fashion, the masses remain basically conservative. They can think of reform but not of total innovation. The fanatical extremist, no matter how eloquent, strikes them as dangerous, traitorous, impractical or even insane. They will not listen to him...
"The division between men of words, fanatics and practical men of action...is not meant to be categorical. Men like Gandhi and Trotsky start out as apparently ineffectual men of words and later display exceptional talents as administrators or generals. A man like Mohammed starts out as a man of words, develops into an implacable fanatic and finally reveals a superb practical sense. A fanatic like Lenin is a master of the spoken word, and unequaled as a man of action. What the classification attempts to suggest is that the readying of the ground for a mass movement is done best by men whose chief claim to excellence is their skill in the use of the spoken or written word; that the hatching of an actual movement requires the temperament and the talents of the fanatic; and that the final consolidation of the movement is largely the work of practical men of action...
12 comments:
My guess is Trump is attempting to move the Overton Window regarding immigration generally in the long term.
You're giving Trump (and more importantly, his followers) far too much credit here. Trump has no long-term strategy for or belief in anything other than the aggrandizement of Trump.
Thus, the fact that he is embracing an essentially fascistic demonization of the "other" bothers me a great deal less than the very high likelihood he has decent market research suggesting that this is the way for him to go.
Trump has no long-term strategy for or belief in anything other than the aggrandizement of Trump.
That's what I thought initially. I'm not so sure any more.
Thus, the fact that he is embracing an essentially fascistic demonization of the "other" bothers me a great deal less than the very high likelihood he has decent market research suggesting that this is the way for him to go.
Yes, it is alarming. Does it surprise you, though? We've had a run of at least three presidents who essentially have done whatever the hell they've wanted, consequences be damned, and who have spiked the football in the face of their opposition. We've become inured to this sort of behavior.
Well, for the last two cycles we have elected a Great Orator with no brain connected to his mouth whatsoever. Trump is different in that he has a brain, but disconnected from his mouth. As for actions, it is hard to imagine Trump doing worse than the puddin' head in the WH.
Mr. D, I read The True Believer in college and that had quite an effect on me. Very powerful and intense and one of the best books I have ever read.
Re: Trump, I think he is a great communicator if it means being about him and making sure people follow him, but I think his action will only be if it glorifies himself. If not, he could care less. It reminds me of Jesse Ventura where it had to be about him, but for Trump it is on a grander scale with bigger consequences if people follow him.
jerrye92002, saying Obama does not have a brain reminds me of when people said that about W and saying Cheney was pulling the strings. It is selling both of the men short.
Yes, I know I "spoke" in haste and anger. But where O is concerned, I no longer care whether he is brilliant and evil or just supremely stupid, because it doesn't matter to the disaster he has been and continues to be. I mean, climate change is the biggest problem our country faces? Really?
I agree Trump seems to be the same sort of narcissist, but the better orator in terms of his being able to command a press that hates him, where as O only commands a press naturally inclined to fawn all over him. And his statements, while "extreme," are extreme in the right direction, while O's /actions/ AND words are extreme in the WRONG direction.
saying Obama does not have a brain reminds me of when people said that about W and saying Cheney was pulling the strings. It is selling both of the men short.
My two cents -- Obama has a brain and in certain ways he is demonstrably brilliant -- he certainly read the landscape in 2008 very well and his campaign was perfectly orchestrated. Obama is intellectually lazy, however. His primary accomplishment is ramming through the Democratic Party's desiderata on health care, an original idea that dates back to Harry Truman, at a moment when it was possible to do it. Otherwise, he hasn't offered anything I hadn't heard from Democrats since I first became aware of politics back in the 1970s.
Dittos on what Mark said. Obama merely sums up what I've seen from the far left since I was a kid, and he's remarkably conscience-free as he does it. It is the WWE-ization of the body politic, and I see hints of it on both sides of the aisle. We've developed a process of selecting for the narcissist.
I am not sure I would say he is intellectually lazy. It seems to me he has thought about his ideas for a long time and is pretty clear in expressing them, though I do not know his whole process in how he got to the place he is. And calling him conscience-free seems to be an overreach as seeing him talk about certain issues shows him with quite a conscience. I would say we have become a nation that, as one person suggested, likes its political royalty. Instead of kings and queens we have the Kennedy's, the Bush's, the Clinton's, the Daley's, the Cuomo's, etc. To be honest, I am not sure why that is, but we seem to bite into it hook, line and sinker. So we look to elect people that give off that mystique of wealth, fame, power and bloodline. It reminds me of reading the section in "The Preppy Handbook" that talked about people that had good breeding. Ironically, one of their main mentions was George H.W. Bush. Obama was different in many ways, but still had that air about him and like Mark said, had a great machine to capture it.
Re: Trump, who I shall now forever call Voldemort, I am not sure I would say he is moving extremely in the right direction. I think any way he moves at this point is not healthy for the simple reason he is being extremely reckless. And what unnerves me even more is the people who gave him a standing ovation after his latest statement - because they actually believe it.
I would say we have become a nation that, as one person suggested, likes its political royalty. Instead of kings and queens we have the Kennedy's, the Bush's, the Clinton's, the Daley's, the Cuomo's, etc. To be honest, I am not sure why that is, but we seem to bite into it hook, line and sinker.
Hence the runaway success of Jeb Bush in this cycle.
The whole point of the Trump campaign is to give the establishment an upraised middle finger. He's running a populist campaign, the campaign that Huey Long never got to conduct. Perhaps the Democrats love their royalty, but I'm not even convinced of that. Most of the lefties I know prefer Bernie Sanders, but they recognize he's essentially unelectable, so they are prepared to eat their spinach and pull the lever for Clinton.
Chuckwagon, he's got passion on screen, but at various junctures he insists on saying things that are so transparently nonsense that I can't see a way that he doesn't know he's lying. Hence my comment about conscience free. Are we to believe a Harvard trained lawyer isn't aware it's against the law to use political affiliation as a pretext for IRS screening? That it's against the law to handle confidential data on a private server? That nobody told him that people would lose their doctors and insurance with the Health Insurance Deform Act? That not even the most insane actuaries would tell you it would reduce costs?
More or less, I think you're confusing his passion for conscience, and these are two different things. Bush was wrong on a number of things, but in general there was at least a semi-plausible argument for his position. I don't see that for what Mr. Obama has done.
Mr. D, I realized Jeb Bush was not following my pattern so it is not a perfect explanation. :) However, at the beginning it seemed like people were ready to crown him as one of the front-runners as he was building a war chest. It probably explains why his campaign cannot admit its failure as it is running on fumes. I am sure the Bush family machine is up at night trying to figure out where they messed up.
I agree with you on who the Dems would vote for as most of my Dem friends like Sanders, but I think they are resigned to having The Hill being the nominee. I have still not figured out what Democratic Socialism is so I have not joined in. Re: Hillary, let's just say due to the years of being around I have Clinton fatigue. At this point I may not vote for anyone with my only possibility being Rubio, but I am luke-warm at best.
I like your comparison of V's campaign being the one Huey Long never got to run. Good point!
BB, thank you for the distinction of passion for conscience as I can see that. I have not studied the issues as deeply as you have so I would not to be able to agree or disagree if his arguments are nonsense or deliberate lies.
Oh, not that complicated, Chuckwagon Boy. For example, Lois Lerner confessed that the IRS had used political affiliation as a pretext for enhanced audits in testimony to Congress. The same was the basis of the 2nd article of impeachment filed against Richard Nixon.
http://watergate.info/impeachment/articles-of-impeachment
In the same way, figuring out what's going on with Mrs. Clinton isn't that complicated, either--is it logical that a man who has, even with a 41% attendance rate, attended over a thousand security briefings would be unaware of the issues of national security and classified information?
Really, anyone not named "Clinton" would have been in jail now for 1% of what she did with that server.
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