Friends, the leftist media is full of stories about what a threat to "democracy" Trump is, and how he plans to use his second term to seek vengeance against his enemies. Funny thing is, quite a few Trumpers are hoping all this is true: they want Trump to settle scores, put lefties in their place, and drive a stake through the heart of the Democratic Party, from which it will never recover. As Trump himself recently said, "sometimes revenge can be justified". Well, sure. Sometimes one man's "revenge" is another man's "justice". Isn't putting someone in jail for a past crime justified in part by a desire to make them pay for their misdeeds, by a sense that the scales of justice need to be rebalanced by limiting the guilty party's rights and making them suffer...for a legitimate purpose?
By and large, if you ask me, all this talk of "revenge" is hot air. The president, by himself, doesn't have much power to make anyone's life difficult. He would require the active connivance of prosecutors, bureaucrats, law enforcement officials, and others to execute his revenge fantasies, and what are the chances that Trump would find many confederates within the federal goverment that would be prepared to assist him in bringing Democrats to their knees? Of course, as lefties like to point out, just because Trump failed to "lock her up" in his first term, or to hurt a single leftist except in an emotional sense, that doesn't mean he won't exact retribution in Act Two...
In the end, what matters most is perception. If the Dems can convince most voters that Trump is unhinged and vengeful, they can reduce his chances of victory. Moreover, if Biden and his cronies can convince enough powerful establishment types that Trump represents an existential threat to their power base, and possibly their lives, they might be able to justify even more unorthodox methods designed to stymie him. "Lawfare" may look quaint and restrained in a few weeks, or a few months, if leftists take seriously their own rhetoric about Trump. As I've said before, what means would not be justified to stop Trump, if half the things progressives said about him were true? I mean, even if he's only a demi-Hitler, surely canceling an election, or mobilizing an assassin, would be the right thing to do to forestall his reign of terror, no? Food for thought.
It's important to remember that Trump-haters live in a different universe, for all intents and purposes, and they inhabit a completely different headspace than we do. Thus, their claims and their actions, which often seem paranoid and profoundly irrational to us, will seem utterly commonsensical to them. In short, then, expect the unexpected, and don't be surprised if whatever norms remain intact in American politics as I write this post are thrown out the window before this election season is over.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/us/politics/trump-retribution-revenge-democrats.html
RAY TO DR. WADDY AND JACK
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you have thought of this before, but what if Trump just came out and said "I'm not running for president anymore." Would the people who hate him so much just leave him alone thereafter?
Would the candidate who took his place be hated as much as Trump is/was?
Would any candidate who Trump endorsed be hated all of a sudden because Trump endorsed him?
Let's say Pence bounced back and became the Republican candidate, again. How would he be regarded by Trump haters because he was Trump's VP? Seems to me that the Leftists never had much animosity against Pence.
The above "statements" are all what if type questions. But the burning question is why was Trump hated so much in the first place? Why? Because he threatened globalism for starters?
Dr. Waddy and Ray et al from Jack: I saw DJT's "revenge" comments on Fox. He said "sometimes revenge can be justified" as an apparent aside and later said he did not plan to pursue it. Naturally the MSM misrepresented it as an expression of very ominous intent. Ironic that ,since they were all in for Hillary , who was the most grimly vengeful Presidential candidate ever. She could practically taste the power she almost seized, to make second class citizens of all, especially all men, who have plagued her the long while as she endured her humiliating marriage solely for eventual enthronement.
ReplyDeleteThose who reflexively castigate DJT for the remark might (or not) consider the major and beneficial role desire for revenge for Pearl Harbor played in bolstering morale and motivating effort such as enlistment .
Comparison of anyone as degraded as to oppose them to the nazis is a by now cliched and typically presumptuous impulse for leftists. Only ignorance or mindlessness could generate a sincere belief that DJT could or would come within a light year of Hitler's transcendent evil. But such absurd hyperbole is not needed to excite the vicious antipathy of the antiamerican left as amply demonstrated by their relentless and ruthless onslaught on DJT's person and family. They are masters of intimidation and he has perversely thumbed his nose at their best shots . In doing so he has excited their deeply astonished and terribly vindictive hostility. He knows them for what they are and they know he knows it; he is the worst threat to their incipient subjugation of America ever to task them and they hate and fear him for it. Of course he is no Hitler but for them it is enough that he defies them, starting with his un just imposition of prevention of their unassailable darling from claiming her due in 2016. It is enough to motivate in them firm resolve to ruin DJT so thoroughly that nobody would ever henceforth dare to emulate him.
I fully expect a far wiser DJT, knowing what a fundamental threat the antiamerican left poses for all that credits and strengthens American civilization, would if redeemed make his salient priority the disempowerment and marginalization of the faction who he of all people knows best from harrowing experience will stop at nothing to bring America under its marxist boot. If he derives some personal satisfaction from success in this, then all that much the better.
Ray and Dr. Waddy from Jack: I think DJT attracts especially vicious antipathy from the left because of his ebullient personality and his refusal to give them the apologetic deference they arrogate their privilege due to their profound justness. He is their inexorable foe, an insolent interloper, a "happy warrior", and they loath and fear him for it.But Nixon, Reagan, Agnew (before his corruption was revealed), and both Bushes all were treated with intense contempt and calumny by the left. I expect Pence, a man with conservative written all over him, would be similarly excoriated were he President or a nominee. Alinsky advised radicals to make regular use of ridicule and being disposed to haughty dismissiveness anyway (eg. Schumer and Pelosi) they are pleased to get with the program.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy, Ray, et al from Jack: Another factor which causes the left no end of disdain for DJT and Mayor Guiliani is that they are New Yawkas as debased as to be conservatives. This is of course heretically counterintuitive to the antiamerican left which sees NYC as its fief.
ReplyDeleteRay, I think you put your finger on it: Trump is hated because, a) the left-leaning establishment demands that he be hated, and b) he represented a serious threat to said establishment's grip on power. He has consistently said and done things that the Masters of the Universe had declared COULD NOT BE SAID OR DONE -- and he has prospered politically despite, and maybe because of, his contempt for his "betters". To make a long story short, Trump is hated because he won, and because he threatens to win again. They might nor leave him alone entirely if he dropped out of the race, but the ardor of their animosity would quickly dissipate, and quite possibly it would be redirected. Will any Republican/conservative ever be despised as much as Trump? That's a good question. The same establishment machine will be mobilized again, sure, and it will be fine-tuned, BUT Trump's brashness does lend itself to flights of fury that are, uhh, unprecedented, and possibly impossible to duplicate, in my humble opinion.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Jack, that to compare Trump, or Putin, or anyone to Hitler is so cliched at this point that it hardly carries any sting. It would be a very odd sort of GOP presidential nominee who wouldn't be compared, ten times before breakfast, to Hitler, and I think the American people can see through such nonsense. Of course, the corollary is that our allusions to Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot don't carry a ton of weight either -- in this case mainly because most Americans have no idea what or who we're talking about.
Excellent point, Jack, that the Left reserves specially elevated levels of contempt for members of groups they deem their partisan and ideological pets, i.e. members of protected classes, who dare to defy them in any way. Clarence Thomas could tell you all about that. I'm not sure DJT's origins as a New Yorker put him quite in this category, but it would interesting to see how progressives would react to, say, a black or Hispanic Trump. They might well and truly go off the deep end!
Dr. Waddy from Jack: I agree, most Americans probably see all the monsters you cited above as just that. But the America haters of the 60's, who work such grievous degradation on our country ,did not have pictures of Himmler, Heydrich or Hitler on their dorm room walls or in their offices in their tax payer supported wonderful storefront revolutionary "community organization" nodes. They put "Che", Mao and the "universal" NVA soldier up for veneration. That discredits them every bit as much and their appalling influence today makes them a present threat to all we cherish.
ReplyDeleteJack, the lefties patented selective outrage, and I certainly don't hear them fretting about Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot's atrocities, which tells us something...
ReplyDelete