Posted on 01/04/2016 2:20:42 PM PST by presidio9
Five-time Jeopardy! champion Tom Nichols1 writes today about why so many people are attracted to Donald Trump. Nichols is a Republican, but makes it very clear that he deeply loathes Trump("hideous," "narcissistic," "creepy," "stupid," etc.) and will never vote for him. So what's his take on Trump's popularity? Is it due to economic insecurity? Inchoate anger? Bubbling racism and xenophobia? Hatred of the Republican establishment?
Nah. He says that Trump's rise is basically the fault of the left:
To understand Trump’s seemingly effortless seizure of the public spotlight, forget about programs, and instead zero in on the one complaint that seems to unite all of the disparate angry factions gravitating to him: political correctness. This, more than anything, is how the left created Trump
Uh oh. That's not going to go over well. For what it's worth, Nichols is clear that he isn't referring to garden variety political correctness, which is basically little more than avoiding terms that are obviously insulting or exclusionary. At worst, that stuff is annoying but well-meaning:
Today, however, we have a new, more virulent political correctness that terrorizes both liberals and conservatives, old-line Democrats and Republicans, alike....The extremist adherents of this new political correctness have essentially taken a flamethrower to the public space and annihilated its center....Any incorrect position, any expression of the Constitutional right to a different opinion, or even just a slip of the tongue can lead to public ostracism and the loss of a job.
....Gay marriage is a good example. Liberals wanted gay marriage to win in the Supreme Court, and it did. Leftists wanted more: to silence their opponents even after those opponents completely lost on the issue....I could reel off many other examples. When the New York Times tells the rubes that it’s time to hand in their guns, when The Washington Post suggests that Jesus is ashamed of them for not welcoming Syrian refugees the week after a terrorist attack, people react not because they love guns or hate Syrians, but because their natural urge to being told by coastal liberals that they’re awful people and that they should just obey and shut up is to issue a certain Anglo-Saxon verb and pronoun combination with all the vigor they can muster. And if they can’t say it themselves, they’ll find someone who will, even if it’s a crude jerk from Queens who can’t make a point without raising his pinky like a Mafia goon explaining the vig to you after you’ve had a bad day at the track.
....For the record, I despise Donald Trump and I will vote for almost any Republican (well, okay, not Ben Carson) rather than Trump....But I understand the fear of being silenced that’s prompting otherwise decent people to make common cause with racists and modern Know-Nothings, and I blame the American left for creating that fear.
....How long this will go on, then, depends on how long it will take for those people to feel reassured that someone besides Trump will represent their concerns without backing down in the face of catcalls about racism, sexism, LGBTQ-phobia, Islamophobia, or any other number of labels deployed mostly to extinguish their dissent.
This is hardly a new critique. Conservatives have been complaining about "being silenced" forever. The only difference between Trump and the rest of the GOP field is that Trump's complaints are a little earthier than Rubio's or Bush's.
Still, even if I think Nichols is overstating things, it's not as if he doesn't have a point. Even those of us on the left feel the wrath of the leftier-than-thou brigade from time to time. I don't generally have a hard time avoiding objectionable language myself because (a) I'm liberal, (b) I'm good with words, and (c) I write rather than talk, which gives me time to get my act together. But even at that, sometimes I cross an invisible line and get trounced for it.
But for someone without my advantages, I can easily see how it might feel almost impossible to express an unpopular opinion without tying yourself in knots. And let's be honest: we liberals do tend to yell racism a little more often than we should. And we do tend to suggest that anyone who like guns or Jesus is a rube. And the whole "privilege" thing sure does get tiresome sometimes. And we do get a little pedantic in our insistence that no conversation about anything is complete unless it specifically acknowledges the special problems of marginalized groups. It can be pretty suffocating at times.
For the most part, I don't mind this stuff—and conservatives do themselves no favors by harping on supposed PC idiocy like the "war on Christmas." But that's largely because I can navigate it reasonably well and I mostly agree with the aims of the PC police anyway. People who can't obviously feel a lot more constrained. So while I don't really buy Nichols' argument—conservatives built the monster named Trump, not liberals—I do think he has a germ of a point. Donald Trump is basically telling ordinary people that ordinary language is OK, and since that's the only language they know, it means they feel like they can finally talk again.
OK, fine, he's also a Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College.
Former Republican, anyway: "I’m a conservative independent and a former Republican. I quit the party in 2012 because of exactly the kind of coarse ignorance that Trump represents. The night Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary on the thoughtful platform of colonizing the moon, I was out."
I included that second sentence only because it tickled me.
Much of this I've learned from reading stuff by academics, who are the masters of acceptable language. As an example: if you were to call something "black behavior," you'd probably get mauled. The solution? Call it "behavior stereotypically coded as black." This accomplishes so many things at once. However, it's also phraseology that no ordinary person would ever think of. This means they literally have no acceptable way of expressing the original thought, which makes them feel silenced.
>Somewhat of a crock. Yes, the liberals are a cause, but the GOPe is a signiicant >contributing factor.
I have wondered what the lower case “e” in GOPe stood for. It finally dawned on me—it is for excrement. All makes sense now.
The answer to the title question is yes and no.
The question needs to be clarified. First of all, there are no more Liberals, there are only Progressive Starists and they are on both sides of the political aisle. It is these Progressive Statists and the fact that the Republican Insiders are also Progressive Statists that caused the rise of Donald Trump. The insiders left an opening big enough to create a leadership vacuum and in slid Donald Trump.
Obama and the left told us in 2008 that they were planning to create a country like France with a single giant union that supports the far left government. That is what we are seeing.
I believe that it is the Unions that are controlling the Republican Insiders, particularly, the coal unions. I can explain my theory if anyone is interested. Just note which states the Patriot mines were located and look at the lack of help from the Republican Insiders.
Nietzsche wrote;
Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.
I don’t disagree with either of you. Winning requires a complete campaign.
Republicans win on issues; lose on ad hominem. That is true. But the issues have to be effectively marketed, just a any other product is effectively marketed. Example.
Chicago NW burbs’ TeaParty-Joe Walsh won in 2010 on issues and ground game. For re-election he was given the election on a silver platter. Local Dems raised taxes and the Democrat working class homeowners were pissed. They were paying their mortgage and taxes on houses far under water. They were angry that the local Dems treated them this way and were in open rebellion.
So what did Joe Walsh do? He criticized his quadraplegic Veteran opponent for exaggerating her military record. Well those working class Democrats are veterans. Their father or uncle is a veteran. They did not take kindly to critizing a veteran.
Walsh’s campaign staff had advised him to exploit the tax issue. But the blew it off. He lost the election right there in Summer.
After the Murdoch and Aiken debacles, Walsh went out of his way to say he was Pro-life no exceptions. It was stupid to add the words -no-exceptions-. The issue in congress is funding abortions. Again, that was against the advice of his campaign staff.
That is a good example of why we lose.
Do liberals think everything happens because of them? (that of course is rhetorical - there is no free thought, there are only the ignorant and the responses of the ignorant to liberals trying to make the world better by controlling and manipulating the ignorant.)
“And let’s be honest: we liberals do tend to yell racism a little more often than we should.”
That sentence alone would be enough to get someone driven out of Yale. The author overestimates his PC navigation skills. And by the New Standard, he’s just outed himself as a racist.
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