Let me add that Trump personally doesn't seem hostile to cis-gender gays (as he had some as candidates on The Apprentice), but makes jokes distancing himself from the debate when be allies himself with people known for anti-gay activity in the past (Pence: "He wants to hang 'em all".) He seems to have a problem with gender ambiguity itself.
Wednesday, January 03, 2018
OK, I waffle on Donald Trump; but no one gets to bargain with my own life (especially with fictitious nuclear buttons)
I wanted to
open this blog in 2018 by noting my own inconsistent attitude toward our
president, Donald Trump.
I used to
watch the Apprentice in the mid 2000’s, and at the time I though his judgment
in the boardroom, on who to fire, made sense.
I recall especially one episode where he fired someone for a “life threatening”
admission which reminded me of my own experience when substitute teaching. I
thought the episode where Troy McClain “took one for the team” (allowing, as
Trump even notes in “How to Get Rich”, his legs to be waxed on camera) was
interesting, and later Trump offered to pay all of Troy’s college tuition. Troy indeed allowed a major bargaining of his own body integrity.
But as a political
candidate, his willingness to give in to hypertribalism seems shocking, and
goes way beyond the behaviors I would have expected from “The Apprentice”. He
acts like a quasi-dictator who will play to his base and settle a score against
the intellectual “elites”. Resentment,
grudges, and “take care of your own” mentality can feed both fascism and communism.
I was
concerned that he would turn on individual Internet users as posing unnecessary
security problems with gratuitous behavior;
instead, he embraced Twitter himself and went after only the mainstream
liberal media. He has hinted that he could jail journalists or defeated
political opponents, as if that is how you make things right for your base.
Now, I watch
the very real possibility that he could have boxed himself into a corner on not
allowed North Korea to have nuclear weapons.
That’s a theory that I have gone along with, part of the McNamara “Domino Theory” in Vietnam that I
covered in my own DADT-1 book (especially my summer of 1968 at the Pentagon,
described in Section 10 of Chapter 2). But his increasing “rocket man” tweets and the
latest exchange over who has the biggest nuclear button, something else is
going on. Trump mentions the starving people in North Korea, but doesn’t see he
defeats his own point. People in South
Korea, Japan, Guam, Hawaii, Alaska, and eventually all of the continental United
States are relatively “rich” and have lives that can be bargained away in a “limited
nuclear war” designed to prove something for the future. We’ve seen this test of
resilience before. As I noted in my
books, the Vietnam era draft, which Trump avoided, but which sheltered a lot of
us (including me) with student deferments and better treatment in the military
but which let “McNamara’s morons” become cannon fodder, plays into the
argument. Who individuals show
resilience when faced with common challenge is always a moral issue.
I have
tweeted Trump, trying to calm down his most reckless comments, and reminded him
several times that even the continental US could face am EMP threat (especially
E1) which might be easier for North Korea to pull off than an actual nuclear
strike on a city. I have had some success
in getting the major media start taking this seriously. I have played ball with Trump on some other
issues, saying you can solve health care if you do all the math (on subsidies
and reinsurance) first.
Let me add that Trump personally doesn't seem hostile to cis-gender gays (as he had some as candidates on The Apprentice), but makes jokes distancing himself from the debate when be allies himself with people known for anti-gay activity in the past (Pence: "He wants to hang 'em all".) He seems to have a problem with gender ambiguity itself.
Let me add that Trump personally doesn't seem hostile to cis-gender gays (as he had some as candidates on The Apprentice), but makes jokes distancing himself from the debate when be allies himself with people known for anti-gay activity in the past (Pence: "He wants to hang 'em all".) He seems to have a problem with gender ambiguity itself.
Populism may
air grievances and put former “elites” in their place (maybe in tombs) but it
doesn’t solve problems. It just spreads
around the sacrifices, and you don’t know when they will hit “you” personally. But when they do, it’s entirely on “you”.
But I still
refuse to play identity politics or intersectionality. i can't join somebody else's group to pimp my own victimhood. I have to get my own work done first to be of
any good to others. If Trump or anyone
else bargains that away, I’m gone.
Picture: Accuweather advertises my own books back to me.
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