Justin Raimondo: What Trump Means

[TheCount]

This....this is sarcasm, right?

I don't think it is.

 

[osan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVqhe_KWBaY

Not bad, but just as with most of the rest of this sort of fare there is too much assumption present. Raimondo does seem to limit his in some notable degree when compared with many others, but still speaks based on some excess. We as a people have gotten into some very bad habits.

Assume nothing. Take no grant of truth based on appearance or word, nor even action at this point. The man is not even sworn in. Give him rope aplenty. No matter what we feel or suspect, it will make little to no difference in terms of results from a Trump administration - certainly not at this early stage in the game. Pay it out in silence and see what he weaves. Time will come to make noise later, I suspect.

Another point to consider for the ultra-paranoid: It is not beyond plausibility that Trump was put in place as a sorting device for the purpose of separating those whom Theye would have identified as "troublesome". Float a Trump and see who comes forth. This is a rather outside possibility, but not beyond it. I mention it that people may be prepared in their minds for absolutely anything, including flying elephants.

But remain silent on the question of whether Trump is what he says/appears. If nothing else, consider it an exercise in the cultivation of self-control, and as a lesson in the virtue of wait/see patience. While we're at it, it's also a lesson in humility and in the practice of scientific method as well.

There is much to be gained by just sitting in wait, watching. There is much to be lost in running off, half-cocked.

I would finally add that for those who make big and presumptuous remarks about Trump, for or against, do so not only without validly demonstrated cause, but will have no valid basis for the "I told you so"s in the event their lousy prognostications come to pass. This is because the eventual correctness of their words cannot be causally linked to the outcomes without demonstration of the link between the original assertions and evidence available at the time. In other words, they just got lucky. So unless you can provide damning evidence of Trump's devilry or sainthood, your opinions on who he is and what he will ultimately bring to pass are naught more than hot air. Speak if you will, but it behooves you to temper your utterances and provide any assertions with abundant and valid support.

 

[Theocrat]

What Trump Means?

It means that nothing is going to change with foreign policy, monetary/fiscal policy, nor domestic policy. All of you who supported Trump are going to be disappointed.

 

[nikcers]

As I already told TheCount, my guess is that he's not particularly conservative at all, polically. Not fake, not real, just not.

Are *you* a fake conservative or a real conservative, NiKKKers?

This thread isn't about me, you're welcome to start one but I think it would be off topic in this subforum. Your double think sickens me to the core. There isn't a middle gray area to this, either Trump is filling his cabinet with people that want to expand CIA spying powers, bildabergers, anti-Iran Zionists, or he is a conservative. Its not both, its not splitting the difference. This is a flat out lie that you are propagating.

 

[TheCount]

Your double think sickens me to the core. There isn't a middle gray area to this, either Trump is filling his cabinet with people that want to expand CIA spying powers, bildabergers, anti-Iran Zionists, or he is a conservative. Its not both, its not splitting the difference. This is a flat out lie that you are propagating.

To certain people, all that is important is that "we" won. Any attempt to get these people to define who this "we" group of winners is, exactly, leads to an endless loop of circular reasoning. This leads me to one of two conclusions: Either the logic as to how exactly "we" won is incredibly poor, or they would rather not share exactly what sort of people won as a result of Trump's election.

 

[AZJoe]

Repealing all regulations, even the good ones, is a boon for big business too.

Repealing the regulation is still a good thing. Yes repealing the the regulations can be a boon to some big business - those big businesses that do not rely on regulations to artificially provide a de facto monopoly keeping small competition and new startups out. For the most part, however, regulations merely protect big business from competition from small and new business.

In fact quite often big business is the lobbyist and author of regulations. For instance Enron was a tireless advocate for strict global energy regulations. Phillip Morris aggressively lobbied for heightened federal regulation of tobacco. General Motors provided critical support for the "clean air" regulations. All of theses regulations were to keep out competition from smaller rivals and raise the cost of entry to prevent any competition from new startups. With few if any exceptions, every significant introduction of government regulation, taxation, and spending has been to the benefit of some big business.


https://www.cato.org/policy-report/julyaugust-2006/big-business-big-government

 

[otherone]

So, just plain conservative, or libertarian-conservative?

How about ronservative?

 

[enhanced_deficit]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVqhe_KWBaY

Listened to this earlier, good points made there by JR.

 

[H. E. Panqui]

helmuth opines: [Trump] doesn't smoke, drink, or do drugs, and to all accounts never has, not even once. Conservative. He was brought up in military boarding school. Conservative.

So temperamentally he has some right, but probably just as much left.



...ime, many more people who identify as 'liberals' take MUCH better care of their bodies, have a better diet, etc. than your typical 'conservative republican,' who tends towards a horrible diet and morbid obesity...[and morbid goddamned foolishness]

...helmuth has his own unique definition of 'conservatism'...as do most/all 'conservatives'...confusion abounds in republicratdom...

...myself, i like to use a dictionary...where 'conservatives' are defined as 'people who want to preserve the status quo and existing institutions'...

...one problem is that many radio-republican fools consider themselves 'conservatives'...but what they really want is massive [and stooooooooooooooooopid] change in many areas of government...advocating for massive change and calling yourself 'conservative' is just plain ignorant, inane..

....ime, 'conservatives' really really suck...for one example, i've never met even one who honestly understands the hideous origin and nature of even one 'dollar' despite their holes frequently working as to the illion dollar economy...

...ime, the biggest group in 'the conservative tent' are the abortion prohibitionists...ime, abortion prohibitionists, like drug prohibitionists, etc., are consistently thoughtless...emotionally driven...easily misled...

 

[helmuth_hubener]

This is a flat out lie that you are propagating.

Could you please state the lie that you have hallucinated into my posts and that you believe -- in all sincerity, I'm sure -- that I am "propagating"? Just put the lie in simple sentence form. That way those not quite so hallucinatory will be able to understand what's going on here.

Thanks!

 

[helmuth_hubener]

How about ronservative?

Ahh yeah!

 

[helmuth_hubener]

OK, Hank, I don't want you to feel totally left out, so I'll use your post to make two important, substantive points.

First, a sanity and reality injection; a little clean-up work on all the mud being thrown at me:

Hank, like niKKKers, and TheCount, wants to pin the blame for the election results and all the other problems which trouble him (/them) upon me. And upon "my kind," of course, to make my culpability more plausible. And to do this they must mentally hallucinate me into being a member of a group that I really am not a part of! Well fine, Hank does this for all RPFers, incessently blaming us for all "republicrat" evils and lumping us in with all the "republicrat fools" of this sad, forsaken world in which he dwells. Listening to people and accepting their honest differentiation and individuality is not his strong point. That Ron Paul supporters might be a little bit different than Bob Dole supporters and that perhaps not all the blame for the world's sorrows can be cast at our doorstep, that never enters into his brain.

Nor, apparently, does it enter into TheCount's brain that perhaps explaining how some people think is not the same as agreeing with how they think.

And of course nothing enters into niKKKer's brain, except how she's going to find another juicy batch of kids to kidnap and abuse by accusing their parents of starving them.

OK. On to the two points:

Helmuth has his own unique definition of 'conservatism'...as do most/all 'conservatives'

When most or all of a group define themselves in a particular way, if one wants to understand that group -- as opposed to simply hate, despise, and mentally spit on them -- perhaps one should take at least the smallest bit of consideration into those factors they consider important to defining themselves. Dive into their model of thinking.

To just say, well, they're just wrong, about everything, including the parameters of their own self-identified group and self-image?! That is not going to be a very enlightening nor productive scholarly path. What Egyptologist takes the position: "Egyptians were stupid. End of story."? How about a bacteriologist: "Bacteria are gross."

Anyway, Point #2 is that people do not vote based on policy. By and large. They don't. Now by and large, we on RPF maybe do (maybe!). But we aren't most. Fact is, people do not vote based on policy. People vote based on a complex lattice of psychological factors. People vote in a way that allows them to stay loyal to their self-image and to be the hero of the movie playing in their head.

In short:

Politics isn't just about policy. It's about other things. And it's largely about temperament.

Even if TheCount thinks that's utterly moronic. Moronic, maybe, but true! Fact is, he too is ruled largely by emotion and psychology. He just doesn't know it.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I think it's safe to say you yourself do not have a conservative temperament, TheCount. Yes? So you are not particularly well-suited to grasp it.

For me, if I were a conservative, it would be about winning. Conservatives have been Total Losers for half a century, probably a century, and maybe, actually, since Jacksonian times. Total. Complete. Utter. Losers. Nothing and I mean nothing that conservatives would have wanted and had in their agenda has been accomplished at the national level. So really, does it matter if Trump is a "conservative"? No. What matters is can he actually win? Can he succeed in getting through some part of the conservative agenda, unlike all the sad, total losers before him? That is the bet conservatives made with him, in my opinion, even though they didn't consciously put it that way. Long-shot though it might be.

Oh, and he's going to bring back "Merry Christmas"! Remember? You probably don't -- just another ridiculous thing Trump said, right?, but this is the kind of stuff conservatives really care about. And he gave them what they wanted, about a hundred times over.

This....this is sarcasm, right?

The big "" face should have helped you! Eh?

Look, TheCount was asking how conservatives could possibly support this guy, and I was simply offering my own speculation on how that occurred. I was not saying this was nor is my thinking. It is theirs, and probably not consciously at that. I was explaining, not agreeing. Is that OK? It is pretty undeniable (though TheCount has now denied it in this thread! ) that Trump did, in fact, win over the vast, vast majority of voters who consider themselves conservative to vote for him. 90-some percent, IIRC. He did it somehow. Do you have any idea how? I do.

My model fits reality pretty well. It certainly predicted it very well, which, scientifically, is a good indicator.

 

[TheCount]

It is pretty undeniable (though TheCount has now denied it in this thread! ) that Trump did, in fact, win over the vast, vast majority of voters who consider themselves conservative to vote for him. 90-some percent, IIRC.

This, in combination with your previous posts, requires a Mobius strip of logic: Trump is conservative because conservatives voted for him, and people who voted for Trump are conservative by virtue of voting for Trump.


Neither is true.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

This, in combination with your previous posts, requires a Mobius strip of logic: Trump is conservative because conservatives voted for him, and people who voted for Trump are conservative by virtue of voting for Trump.


Neither is true.

Your hallucination is noted.

 

[juleswin]

Your hallucination is noted.

I have been following this conversion from the start and forget about people hallucinating. How about u tell us all what is conservative about Trump. Not what his supporters say about him, just usually the policies he has promoted in the past and present.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I have been following this conversion from the start and forget about people hallucinating. How about u tell us all what is conservative about Trump.

That's the hallucination.


Apparently you share it.


This will be the third time (at least) that I have said it in just this thread: I do not think Trump is particularly conservative politically.

So how could I "tell u all" how is he a conservative when I believe he is not?

This thread isn't that long. There aren't that many Helmuth posts in it. You couldn't possibly have missed this information. How, then, did this happen? Hallucination. Literally.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I thought that it seemed you gave our right-leaning eccentricities more jeering than our left-leaning ones.

Oh, this is definitely true, for the same reason that I mock Trump more than I mock Hillary here: There's no sense preaching to the choir.

Oh good, I wasn't going crazy! Thank you so much for your upfront response about that. I thought that every time there was a thread wherein Zippyjuan was on one side and, say tod evans was on the other (along with most of the rest of RPFs), you would be found on the same side as Zippyjuan, arguing his case.

On monetary policy and banking matters, for example -- an issue of particularly strong interest to me -- you are always strongly for Zippyjuan and strongly against me.

I'm not too sure what's conservative about fiat money and fractional reserves. Both seem dishonest and fraudulent to me. But that's just me.

 

[juleswin]

That's the hallucination.


Apparently you share it.


This will be the third time (at least) that I have said it in just this thread: I do not think Trump is particularly conservative politically.

So how could I "tell u all" how is he a conservative when I believe he is not?

This thread isn't that long. There aren't that many Helmuth posts in it. You couldn't possibly have missed this information. How, then, did this happen? Hallucination. Literally.

Thanks for the reply. I don't know why I was expecting more from this paragraph.

He is not! Indeed, my guess would be he is not particularly conservative politically, although personally he does have "conservative" (probably better and less ambiguously called "right-pattern") temperament elements he has inherited or had injected into him. Namely: he doesn't smoke, drink, or do drugs, and to all accounts never has, not even once. Conservative. He was brought up in military boarding school. Conservative.

I think I must have missed the personally and temperment. Then again, I would think he is more liberal than conservative even in his personal life. For one he curses a lot, is a womanizer, has multiple children with multiple women(that he takes care of), not religious, pals around with lowlifes and corrupt to the gill people and does business with low moral characters.

Btw, smoking and drinking is not a conservative trait, I would grant you the doing of drugs. But just about everything else about him screams liberal not conservative.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

For one he curses a lot, is a womanizer, has multiple children with multiple women(that he takes care of), not religious, pals around with lowlifes and corrupt to the gill people and does business with low moral characters.

I do not particularly disagree. Indeed, I wrote "So temperamentally he has some right, but probably just as much left," and it was issues such as these that you brought up that I was thinking of (there are others as well).

Thank you, juleswin, for for accepting and understanding what I was saying, rather than doubling down on the hallucination. The latter is the easier and more common course.