(07-28-2017, 04:29 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: What I've noticed is that the left seems to value style and perception over action and results. People tell me, "how can you support Trump? He's so horrible, he said X!" And I go, "why should I care what he says? I only care about what people do."
1. We in the center-left are swift to call for those on our side to step down from high political office when they go immoral. Harrison Williams? Mel Reynolds? William Jefferson? Rod Blagojevich? Sure, those were crooks. But cheating on your wife, as did John Edwards? (That's who I voted for in the 2008 primary before that stuff came out). Maybe we are more concerned about issues and competence than about person and expect another chance.
Here's the tricky part: there were people on the Right who thought that the crotch-grabbing and meandering into female changing rooms, or bragging about shooting people down but people still cheering him discredited a Presidential nominee. It is unfortunate for America that the people who most heeded that advice were people like me. (No, I would not have excused such stuff by someone on 'my' side of the political spectrum). Face it -- if I had a daughter and some street punk grabbed her by the crotch without her consent, then I would support her pressing charges if she were an adult and press charges on him if she were underage. That is sexual assault.
2. Maybe Donald Trump is a rogue, but at least he is honest about it. But he seems to act as if he has some entitlement to get away with it because he is 'the Donald'. That's one way to set up a personality cult, something inconsistent with democracy. Maybe some person is less vile for admitting that he is a pimp or a pusher, but I would want nothing to do with the swine.
3. He praised dictators. I can think of other people, conservative figures, who would be far more suited to the sensibilities of Americans than fascist, Commie, or Ba'athist tyrants.
4. Words are the strongest tools in the repertory of a great leader. They give people the cause to put out more materiel for the war, to accept shortages in what was recently commonplace, to recognize that their precious son must put his life on the line, and that soldiers need to take a fortified pillbox. Maybe the use of powerful rhetoric isn't so critical when there is no immediate danger (as with Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher) or if one uses them largely to calm a situation not yet a full-blown crisis (Barack Obama). Donald Trump is more likely to put America into a mess that it might never get into than to explain what it takes to get through some of the most dangerous and destructive times in history. I see him as the antithesis of a Lincoln, an FDR, or a Churchill.
A President or Prime Minister is in a position in which to make the highest decisions, like the choice of where to strike with the most powerful concentration of Armed Forces or to set the economic policy. That takes wisdom, the humility to recognize that one may be terribly wrong, strong principle, basic decency, and a moral compass, none of which I can ascribe to Donald Trump. Even technical expertise pales in contrast for value in the top leader.
5. I do not accuse President Trump of being irresolute (so far as I can tell he believes firmly in what he says no matter how objective reality shows his beliefs wrong). But he can be resolute and wrong, which is far worse than being confused and teachable. I am fully satisfied that Hitler believed everything he said about the Jews, including that their elimination from the world would be a great service to Humanity. I am also satisfied that Stalin believed that turning peasants into serfs of the state and to ensure that nobody had to concern himself with a market was the best way to modernize a country that he considered backward. I am also convinced that Miguel de Torquemada believed that any brutality had justification if it led even a small number heretics or non-Christians to Jesus instead of the eternal damnation that awaited anyone who failed to toe the line on one exclusive means, one theology and baptism, of salvation.
Today we recognize Torquemada, Stalin, and Hitler great figures of unmitigated evil even if they had some understandable, if inexcusable, intentions to do real good for Humanity. To be sure, Donald Trump is nowhere near that category. He is more likely to bumble his way into a calamity than to design one. But bumbling one's way into a calamity can be just as destructive as initiating evil through malignant intention and contempt for the usual decencies.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.