Trenchant Thoughts

• The man is clearly a text-book narcissist. Everything is about him, and nothing that isn’t about him appears to be of much interest to him.
• He clearly has no self-control. His twitter feed is a testimony to his utter inability to hold his tongue.
• He is clearly not a smart man. I know how desperately those on the left want politicians on the right to be stupid (I’m not saying that Trump is a man of the right, but he is a Republican), but he’s clearly, well, dumb. For example, he doesn’t have a clue what a trade deficit is. He rambles in a way that calls into question his mental well-being, to be honest.
• He’s a charlatan. He’s a liar. He cheats. He brags about both in his book The Art of the Deal. He’s declared bankruptcy multiple times to escape paying what he owes. He can’t be trusted.
• He’s a reprobate. He cheats on his wives, pays off porn starts — shoot, he has sex with porn stars while his wife is recovering from delivering their child — and clearly has no respect for women. His disdain for and lack of respect for John McCain was repulsive.
• He’s ruining the Republican party. Not that I’m a fan of the party, but the gyrations that its members have to go through in order to continue to support him make Simone Biles look inflexible. The party has clearly made huge compromises as a result of his presidency.  It will take years to recover from the damage.   And I’ll say that even if things go well for Republicans this fall.
• He’s a national embarrassment. People around the world can’t believe that we elected such a person as our President. Good grief, half the people in this country can’t believe it either.
• I can’t say with authority that he’s a criminal, but he sure seems to hang around with unsavory people.
• Now not everything he’s done has been horrible. I appreciate the tax cuts and the sound choices he’s made for the Supreme Court. But that’s a pretty short list. I certainly don’t appreciate the ridiculous trade policy and all the investigations swirling around his administration. Nevertheless, the stock market is up, unemployment is very low, and the economy is growing at a healthy pace. I personally don’t think that these events are due to things Trump — or Obama — has done, but facts are facts.
• I’m happy to say that I didn’t vote for the man. I confess I almost did because I find Hilary Clinton such a truly distasteful person (not that I don’t find Trump to be the same), but in the end I pulled the lever for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate. I’m glad I did, because my sense of shame in voting for Trump would be profound.
• I will add that I am not even remotely fearful, as some of my friends on the left are, that we are in danger of losing the Republic and that Trump has some grand design to take over the country and make it a dictatorship. That’s just silly in my mind. While I agree that Trump admires dictators a bit too much — he clearly envies the (alleged) “devotion” they get — I think that stems more from his lack of understanding than from some nefarious plan. In either 2 or 6 years, we’ll elect a new President and power will peacefully transfer to the new person. We aren’t going to devolve into some banana republic because of Trump.
• As a side note, as a veteran, I find this whole military parade thing highly distasteful, and more evidence of Trump’s pettiness.
• I don’t believe that there is (yet) evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors”. However, I won’t be at all surprised if I do feel that way as events unfold.
• Character matters. The more important a person is, the more that’s true. As Jonah Goldberg argues, there is no definition of good character that Trump can clear. I can’t support a person with such poor character.

Alfie Evans has died.

We’ll never know if Alfie would have lived longer than he did, because murderous, tyrannical, evil people stopped Alfie from having any chance at life.

The British government not only refused treatment to Alfie, they refused to let him eat or drink.  Not only did they starve and dehydrate him, they didn’t even let him go home to die in peace with his parents.  Not only did they refuse to allow him to be with his parents, they didn’t let the citizen of another country leave Great Britain to go to his home country.  (The Pope, God bless him, convinced Italy to grant Alfie citizenship, and the Italians, God bless them, had an airplane on standby ready to take Alfie to Italy where he could receive proper care.)

I am deeply moved by the death of little Alfie. Today I pray especially for his parents, as God the Father receives him in his tender embrace.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) April 28, 2018

I am left almost without words by this.  But I will press through and say this:  The British government did a savage, brutal, murderous, heinous, terrible, repulsive, evil — EVIL — thing.

I hurt for Alfie’s parents.  Why they would remain in Great Britain is beyond my understanding.

Rest in Peace, Alfie.

I had a big kerfuffle on my facebook page this week.  I posted a peripheral comment about the student walkouts, and it devolved into a pretty typical gun debate.  There were reasonable comments and discussion — I enjoy a lively debate —  and of course a couple of the typical kooky/outlandish ones as well.

A lot of times I don’t get involved but this time I did. In doing so, I mentioned that one of the main reasons that the Second Amendment exists is to prevent the rise of a tyranny here in the US.  This was dismissed with not a small amount of derision as something that would never happen, so there is no need to defend against it.  (Never mind that a different subthread had the dismisser arguing that Donald Trump was behaving in a tyrannical fashion…..)

And this kind of irritated me.  And then it it hit me.  He’s right — it is basically impossible for tyranny to occur here in the US, precisely because the Second Amendment exists.  People find the notion of our government becoming a true tyranny laughable precisely because the Second Amendment guarantees the ability of the people to rebel against such a turn of events.

The fact that the notion of a tyranny arising here in the US is found to be a joke by those (typically) on the Left is because the right of the people to bear arms has made it a joke.  Take it away, like they did during the 20th Century in Germany and Russia and China, and you have key ingredient in the recipe for tyranny.  It can be a slow burn in that direction — witness the deterioration of free speech in Canada — but it can head in that direction only with an unarmed populace.

An armed populace makes tyranny laughable.

In the wake of the horribleness that was the Parkland shooting, there has been much discussion about how much money specific Congress members receive from the NRA.

The idea is that these people receive so much money from the NRA that they are beholden to the organization and will do their bidding.

This is completely wrong.

The reality is that politicians don’t follow the money, the money follows the politicians.

I saw a post which said something to the effect that John McCain (a great American hero, to be sure) has received like $7.7 million from gun lobbies in his career.  There’s a reason for that:  McCain is a reliable vote for gun rights.  McCain doesn’t vote as he does because he gets the money; he gets the money because he votes the way he does.

The NRA isn’t stupid.  They know that they could give millions to Nancy Pelosi, but that wouldn’t change her voting habits one bit.  I’m no fan of Pelosi, but I will say that I doubt seriously that any amount of money could sway her from her gun control beliefs.  That’s the reason the NRA doesn’t give Pelosi money.  If they could sway her with money, they most certainly would.

And of course they give more money to Republicans — Republicans tend to vote for gun rights more than Democrats do.  But if there is a reliable gun rights vote in the Democratic party, you can bet that the NRA will donate to them.

It’s the same for any and all special interest organizations — they don’t buy votes, they support politicians that support what they support.  NARAL doesn’t give money to pro-life politicians, and politicians aren’t pro-abortion because NARAL gives them money.

So the next time you read some post like “<Politician’s Name> received <some amount of money> from <some special interest>”, remember, it’s because of how they vote, not the other way around.