The email is posted here: A Dose of Common Sense and Reality About Pres. Trump That Trump Haters Desperately Need to Keep Them From Totally Losing Their Sanity?
In the email, Narvey writes of the Murphy essay:
Canadian journalist Rex Murphy brilliantly kicks the Trump haters in the ass and provides reasoned, reality based and logical insights and points to totally undermine and refute the worst that Trump haters imagine and say about President Trump.
This is a must read, even for those suffering Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Maybe, just maybe if those so afflicted still have a window in their minds, left ajar just enough to let common sense to flood in like fresh air, they just might be cured of their anti-Trump bias that so debilitates their faculties of reason and logic.This is simply delusional.
What has Murphy exactly destroyed in the fine hobby of Trump hating? Absolutely nothing. Let us take a look.
Murphy begins by claiming of those opposed to the lying intellectual lightweight Trump that:
It is not an absolute requirement for any who write or comment on the politics and policies of President Donald Trump, and who also oppose the polices and detest the man, to renounce the use of reason and abandon the exercise of logic. But such scribes find it gorgeously convenient to do so.Yes, as if attacks pointing out that the theory of comparative advantage is ignored by the president is not using logic. That pointing out that the trade balance is not a problem is not using logic. That attempting to explain the problem with central planning labor flows is not using logic.
Murphy then goes a level deeper in his absurdity:
Reason sets boundaries, and logic is a screen, and both insist on homage to reality and fairness, even from those in the grip of compulsive malice or seeking the easy applause of manic Hillaryites and Democratic superpartisans.There is no doubt that television networks such as MSNBC and CNN seek the applause of the Left but to paint everyone that is anti-Trump in this manner is simply dishonest. Anyone championing free trade, a smaller military and less government spending can position against Trump without coming close to seeking the applause of the Hillary crowd. This is just more nonsense by Murphy denying true sound opposition against Trump by muddying it with the Hillary crowd opposition.
Murphy then writes:
President Trump insists that he is putting America first. This receives the tormented translation that he is a “white nationalist,” a “white supremacist” (a category that has suddenly emerged from its crypt of irrelevance and virtual anachronism into modish press-fed ubiquity) who prioritizes his “personal hatreds” over “good faith” and facts.But how is preventing South American workers from being hired by taxpaying American businessmen putting America first? Or are taxpaying American businessmen not allowed to have a say on who they employ and who they rent to? It appears that, yes, Trump is looking at skin color and the location of birth and not taxpaying American businessmen. How is that not a white nationalist position over taxpaying businessmen, private property, and free markets?
Murphy goes on:
Mr. Trump’s signature declaration is but a statement of the necessarily obvious. He is the president of America. Is there some other country whose interest he should put first?Oh please, has Murphy looked at Trump's positions on Israel? Has he looked at the blood-thirsty neocons in Trump's administration?
He adds:
Trump Tower may be a gaudy excess, but it is emphatically not the Berghof on stilts. The Ride of the Valkyries is not its elevator music (it’s mainly Céline Dion, an altogether more tranquil musician than Wagner), and there is no Alpine prospect from 725 5th Avenue.But he misses the point that no one has to ever visit Trump Tower or pay for its upkeep. While American taxpayers do have to pay for Trump's militaristic schemes including, now, the military on the southern border. Cute, using taxpayer money to fund the southern military effort to prevent immigrants from being available for hire by taxpaying American businessmen. Is this not mad?
This bizarre stuff is going on and yet Murphy finds time to mention gaudy excess in a Trump private building? This is logic?
Narvey needs to keep looking to find an essay that is a big kick in the ass to those who understand that Trump is an intellectual lightweight who has no fundamental principles anywhere near support for liberty, who is a tariff freak, an economic ignoramus, and for good measure is used as a hockey puck by neocons.
The real derangement is in the fact that many former small government types and anarcho-capitalists are supporting Trump so that the logic that shows the weaknesses in his positions are not presented very often.
That is the real problem, not the absurd notion that Trump can't be attacked logically.
-RW
Does "intellectual lightweight" mean stupid here?
ReplyDeleteTaleb's famous article:
https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
I kind of think he is talking about mainstream media and not people with legitimare gripes. If you watch CNN, the biggest thing they didnt like about him was his hair when he was running, followed by his "Russian collusion" when he won, etc. The mainstream hate of Trump is based off a bunch of nonsense, while there are legitimate criticisms voiced by people such as yourself that are generally not talked about in the public debate for the most part. I saw an article that one of the schmucks on the view used Bush's death as an excuse to trash-talk Trump over climate-change. huh? This is the kind of stuff people are used to seeing, more than the thought-out reasons against him.
ReplyDeleteThat's my point. It is dishonest to claim that Trump haters have been "kicked in the ass" by aggregating them all together and giving the impression that you can't attack Trump with logic.
DeleteFrom the point Trump first hit the campaign trail I have consistently pointed out that the left would attack Trump while the right would be sucked up into his statist nonsense which is what has occurred.
Where are the attacks against Trump from Murphy? They don't exist. The Trump loving right and libertarians have fallen in love with a statist buffoon.
I think you're right on that. There are plenty of logic-based attacks you can levy against Trump. Especially his monetary policy. Any economist (like Block) who praises him for one thing, such as his anti-political correctness stance, should also point out his crazy monetary policy ideas that he has voiced. There may be a baby in that bath water, but there is plenty of bath water for sure.
DeleteRobert your point that the masses dont want to wade through the minutia is the key observation that I have to laud you for. It seems even some people with the intelligence to do so dont separate out the BS!
DeleteThe reason that I think that it's wrong to paint Trump as a "white nationalist" or "white supremacist" is that he's not trying to expel non-whites who are US citizens, nor use the police or regulatory state against such non-whites specifically.
ReplyDeleteRather, he's drawing a distinction between citizens and non-citizens (in this case, he seems to be focused on non-white non-citizens, but probably because they're poor, from which he draws all sorts of conclusions about their future actions), and he believes that, with this filter, he's putting Americans first (even though he's putting only some Americans first, namely, those in his favored industries).
Agreed.
DeleteTo add: Calling him racist or even stupid is misdiagnosing the problem, which would lead his opponents' tactics astray.
@The NAPster
DeleteI agree that your description of Trump's motives are probably more accurate than the charge of "white nationalism."
However, is it really that much more morally defensible to persecute someone because of the jurisdictional territory in which he happened to have been born, than it is to persecute someone because of the skin color that he happened to have been born with?
Evan, no, it's not defensible at all. I wasn't making a pro-Trump case, just pointing out that some of the more hysterical criticisms that are a symptom of TDS are off-the-mark (perhaps intentionally so).
Delete