House of Eratosthenes

Seems like just yesterday, when not a single week would go by without someone saying Sarah Palin’s “fifteen minutes were up some time ago” and “it’s time for her to go away.” If I had an archive of recordings I could consult, I believe I’d find much of this defeatist muttering was muttered after she’d gone away.

Donald Trump has gone away, too, but now he’s decided he doesn’t like being gone-away. So he’s promoted himself from aspiring conqueror to kingmaker. And yet: Where are the loud, bumptious voices, preaching to the rest of us that Donald Trump Has Exhausted His Fifteenth Minute Of Fame And Must Go Away Now?

Well, I’ll say it. He’s doing incomparable damage.

The truth that no one seems to be willing to audibly point out is, Donald Trump actually shares a lot in common with our current president. Not quite so much the ideology or the positions on the issues, but this vision for proper government. This whole notion that a candidate is elected with a message, the message becomes a mandate…and, at some point, the message is subsumed, overwhelmed by, and ultimately made insignificant in the looming shadow of the messenger. We get this “most important guy” whose opinions are supremely significant, even if those opinions directly contradict the message that got him elected in the first place. And then this scale of significance, in short order, starts to decide everything. Everyone else in the country is inferior to this guy on top. And that’s even if they agree with the top dog; if they disagree, they’re not significant at all, and this top dog guy gets to scheme up some creative new ways to make the dissenters even more insignificant than they already are. The significance becomes a virtue unto itself and the insignificance becomes some kind of a transgression. People start to brag about the correctness of their positions because they’ve got more Twitter followers than whoever else might disagree.

I know Donald Trump subscribes to this whole school of thought, because he relies on it so often. How many times have we heard him defend himself against someone else, because he counts more than they do. In fact, I struggle to recall a single time he’s persisted long in defending an idea, by actually discussing that idea. So Barack Obama and Donald Trump, it seems, agree on how the government should be run. They both agree there needs to be some “soft monarch” up at the top, who dictates what’s right and what’s wrong, one minute to the next. If that guy ever does something wrong, that thing stops being wrong, right there-and-then, just because Mister Wonderful is doing it. They agree on this, they just disagree on who that top guy should be.

This is anti-American. If we are on the brink of realizing some truth that places the country’s continuing survival in real jeopardy, then surely that would be the truth: We lately cannot conduct our elections in such a way that we vote on the acceptance or rejection of ideas, we instead vote on the acceptance or rejection of people, and we’re going to be stuck in this loop for a few more cycles. How many of these four year cycles, I wonder, would it take to make such “stuckage” terminal to America herself, and make the nation’s demise a certain thing?

I submit that to deal a lasting blow to the spirit that makes her great, it takes only one. We just got done demonstrating that much.

This latest stunt has me actually agreeing with Ron Paul, no mean feat that. Newt Gingrich has been called out by Congressman Paul on the mistake he’s making “kissing the ring” of Donald Trump, and Gingrich is doubling down. When you make a mistake and refuse to admit it, you’ve made two mistakes.

Paul’s right.

Gingrich is wrong.

Trump needs to go away. Right now. He never had fifteen minutes here.

This may seem shallow, but I cannot take seriously a rich man who can’t get himself a hairstyle that doesn’t make him look like an idiot.
- chunt31854 | 12/06/2011 @ 13:32
Maybe you can help me understand exactly what your objection to The Donald is, Morgan.

Coincidentally, he did an interview for this month’s issue of The Limbaugh Letter, which is Rush Limbaugh’s companion publication to go along with his radio show and website. The two had a rather interesting conversation in which Trump lamented many of the common concerns of fiscal conservatives – America is hamstringing itself through excessive environmental regulation and not doing enough to expand domestic drilling for oil. That was one of his main concerns. That, and the Chinese are screwing us with their manipulation of currency. He even laments that all the regulation placed on business in the last twenty years gives him an unfair advantage over competitors who want to enter his markets, because the barriers to entry are now higher than when he got started.

Keep in mind that Donald Trump isn’t some celebrity airhead like Lindsey Lohan or Miley Cyrus. He’s a shrewd businessman, who’s gotten to where he is with hard work and by being smart. I really don’t understand why anyone would have a problem with him, at least as a spokesman or a celebrity.
- cylarz | 12/07/2011 @ 00:52
The problem comes up when personalities conflict with other personalities, as the ideas represented by those personalities are found to conflict with the other ideas.

On the schoolyard, this is easy: There is right, there is wrong, there is us and them…the personalities are welded to the ideas. We’re awesome, they suck. As we grow up, we are eventually forced to reckon with the situation involving good, idealistic, well-intentioned and intelligent people being hoodwinked by ideas we know to be bad ones.

This is not a shopworn plea for humility or civility. Limbaugh, as you well know, uses the “I’m just so completely awesome!” schtick at least as often as The Donald. He ridicules personalities quite often when he tells us what the crooks under the dome are doing. But when a lib calls his show and challenges him civilly, provided it’s an honest one and not one of those boiler-room script-kitties, time after time I’ve heard Limbaugh patiently explain why his idea is the right one, and their idea is the wrong one. I’ve heard him do it respectfully and entirely stay away from the personalities. Have you heard Trump doing something like that? I don’t think he’s got it in him. Whenever I hear him respond to a challenge, and he goes straight for the argument “Why that other person is insignificant compared to me.” His first word is devoted to it, his last word is devoted to it, every single word in between is devoted to it. I’ve seen this time after time after time…

It isn’t what the GOP needs this year — I’ve said it many times, if it’s a contest to decide who’s cool, we may as well cancel the elections, because the champion of that tournament is already “serving.” Oh yeah, He’s on vacation at the moment, but still. But then there’s the matter of having these “who is most awesome” contests decide our policies. It’s anti-American, it’s not part of our tradition, in fact it’s relatively new, and it hasn’t done a single good thing for us. It’s done a lot of damage and it’s high time we left it back in high school where it belongs.

But I said all this above, Cy. With all respect, this is looking like one of those challenges where I’m asked to write more clearly just because someone doesn’t like what was written.
- mkfreeberg | 12/07/2011 @ 07:03
I don’t write to bloggers because I “don’t like” their posts. I write in when I think the bloggers are going off on something without a reason.

So in other words, you don’t like The Donald (and you think this self-appointed “kingmaker” is doing “incomparable damage”)…because he apparently thinks he is better than other people and therefore doesn’t need to consider their arguments.

And by your own admission, when questioned on this…you simply re-hash what you’d already said in your original blog posting. Neither time do you offer any examples of this arrogance on Trump’s part, or even bother to explain why it should matter to anyone what Donald Trump thinks. He isn’t running for president. He doesn’t even work in government.

It’s fine to say all this about Jug Ears. He’s the president of the United States and actually has (and will continue to do) “incomparable damage” to the country. Trump is a real-estate mogul with silly hair and a prime time TV show.

Morgan, I’m disappointed in you.
- cylarz | 12/07/2011 @ 20:13
So now my argument lacks merit because I haven’t provided adequate examples?

The phenomenon is, Donald Trump arguing about personalities as opposed to ideas. Trump has not been known to do anything else. Face it — it would be more appropriate for me to ask you for examples of Trump not doing this. He really is a one-trick pony. Go ahead, prove me wrong.

But the substance of my complaint is not that he does this, or that he does this all the time. My complaint is this is the wrong country for that; it’s anti-American. We don’t decide things are right or wrong based on what magnificent demigod happens to be backing them. Trump can go to France or England if he wants that kind of treatment. It doesn’t fit here.

Really, I don’t know how many other ways I can say it. And yes, it is damaging what he is doing.
- mkfreeberg | 12/07/2011 @ 20:47
So now my argument lacks merit because I haven’t provided adequate examples?

I know, crazy isn’t it? It’s like you’re surprised that one of your regular readers wanted to know what in the hell you are talking about.

The phenomenon is, Donald Trump arguing about personalities as opposed to ideas. Trump has not been known to do anything else. Face it — it would be more appropriate for me to ask you for examples of Trump not doing this. He really is a one-trick pony. Go ahead, prove me wrong.

Glad to. In the interview with Rush, he talks about several “ideas” – expanding domestic oil drilling, dealing with China’s behavior on trade, cutting back on business regulation in the United States, just to name a few already mentioned. Do you want me to go on? If so, I’ll go find the article and provide some quotes. It’s printed material so I can’t just copy and paste, but for you Morgan? Anything. None of those has a whit to do with “personality.”

I did, however, come across this today:

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/12/06/trump-huntsman-gain-airtime-feud

The only “personality” I see on display there is Huntsman. Earlier, Huntsman said he wouldn’t participate in Trump’s debate because didn’t want to “kiss Trump’s ring, or any other part of his anatomy.” Trump called the remark “disgusting.”

That’s why Trump is in the news the past couple of days – because he has offered to host a debate between the presidential candidates. Oddly, you didn’t mention that while you were busy comparing a successful businessman to a certain community-organizing president. I’ll grant that Trump is all over the map politically, and is a fiscal conservative at best, but that’s yet another thing you didn’t criticize him over or even mention.

We don’t decide things are right or wrong based on what magnificent demigod happens to be backing them. Trump can go to France or England if he wants that kind of treatment. It doesn’t fit here.

If you’re so sure of that, then why do you care if Trump thinks he is a kingmaker? If you’re so convinced that the man has an exaggerated sense of self-importance, then why pay any attention to him at all? You *still* haven’t identified the “incomparable damage” part.

Really, I don’t know how many other ways I can say it. And yes, it is damaging what he is doing.

Ah, damaging what *he* is doing. NOW we’re getting somewhere. So now you believe he’s undermining himself. Okay…again, so what? Either what Trump says, counts for something on the GOP campaign trail, or it doesn’t. Or it matters a little, or it matters a lot.

I’ll concede that Trump probably has overestimated the importance of his candidate endorsement, apparently believing that the candidates (and the rest of us in the GOP) are all on pins and needles waiting to see which one he’s going to back. But if nobody is going to vote based on who Donald Trump wants, again, why bother to criticize the guy?

You’re like the “mightysamurai” guy over at Right Wing News, who goes out of his way to tell a particular poster (usually “groundhog”) that nobody cares what he thinks. I finally said to Mighty, “If you’re really that apathetic, why don’t you just ignore him? You responding to his posts, proves that you do care what he thinks.” Do you see where I’m going with this, Morgan?
- cylarz | 12/08/2011 @ 00:43
From your link:

Every candidate, virtually, has come up to my office, and they don’t want my money — they want my endorsement,” Trump said on Fox and Friends Tuesday. “He asked to come and see me. And I said, you know — really, I just sort of turned him down in a very nice way, and now, all of a sudden, look what happens.

Barack Obama might have said something just like that. It proves my point, and it’s not a quote I sought out, I just skimmed down to the very first Trump quote. He just can’t stop doing it, just like I said.

See, the GOP is at a very critical point right now. I’ll say it one more time: It’s just obvious, if most voters are going to do their voting out of concern for the policies and ideas, Obama’s gonna get creamed. He has absolutely none. He does, however, have lots of “cred” and lots of personality and still speaks with great weight…in other words, our current President brings everything to the table that Donald Trump does, and if it comes down to a contest about panache then we might as well cancel it. Republicans need to get their ideas defined, articulated, and stand by them, or else go home.

And it shouldn’t take much. The guys who are in charge right now don’t exactly have a well-oiled machine in place for marketing ideas. They love going through the motions of it and they burn through hundreds of millions of dollars getting their ideas “out there” — but whenever they lose elections, the first place they go is “most people aren’t smart enough to understand our ideas.” If the key to victory is to go for your opponents weakest flank, the logical thing to do is obviously to abandon this misguided search for the perfect charismatic personality…which has done nothing but jettison the candidates most likely to win, and saddle us with the candidates most likely to lose…and concentrate on ideas. I mean, what ideas would the Republicans sell? It’s okay to be happy. You and your family deserve the right to protect yourselves, eat the food you need and burn the fuel you need. For the economy to thrive, first let’s make it okay to prosper.

You seem like the perfect spokesman for the people who, for whatever reason, are resisting this, and are intent on going back to the failed personality-contest model. What’s the rationale here? You seem to be trying to make the point that there’s something I’m missing here. Why don’t you just come out and say what it is?
- mkfreeberg | 12/08/2011 @ 07:22
Okay Morgan, we’re still going around and around, apparently:

And I said, you know — really, I just sort of turned him down in a very nice way, and now, all of a sudden, look what happens.

This is part of the Trump quote you, er, quoted. Where’s the arrogance in that statement? Huntsman is the one with the problem. He didn’t get Trump’s endorsement and he came completely unglued. He’s the one with a problem, not Trump.

. The guys who are in charge right now don’t exactly have a well-oiled machine in place for marketing ideas. They love going through the motions of it and they burn through hundreds of millions of dollars getting their ideas “out there” — but whenever they lose elections, the first place they go is “most people aren’t smart enough to understand our ideas.”

Yeah, the Democrats do this every time they lose an election. What does it have to do with Trump?

We’re in our third or fourth iteration of this conversation now and I still do not understand why you keep comparing Trump to the president. I already agree with you that Obama and the Democrats “got nuthin'” as far as ideas for improving the country that would actually work. Hell, that’s why I keep coming back here – to get my biases confirmed, I guess.

What I don’t understand is why anyone wants to make that claim about Trump. I just provided you with some information that proves he *is* about ideas. Not that it matters – he hasn’t actually announced any plans to use those policy proposals or ideas to get elected President himself. (Disclosure: he still hasn’t ruled out the possibility of running as a Ross Perot lookalike – a business man running as an independent who says he is frustrated with all major parties and candidates.) I still don’t see why Trump annoys you so much.
- cylarz | 12/08/2011 @ 12:11
We’re going around in circles because you’re engaging in a lot of bloating and posturing that might be appropriate if you actually brought some evidence to support your position, which as I understand it is that Trump is about ideas. You’ve put up one link peppered with Donald Trump quotes, each of which is either about his own wonderfulness, or about this-or-that candidate sinking or rising in polls…polls being nothing more than bits of evidence about what someone else thinks. From going over your link, I don’t see a single statement about what Trump thinks needs to happen in order for the country’s situation to be improved.

I’ll admit, I did duck your demand to supply evidence Trump’s rhetoric is peppered with me, me, I, I, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that…it’s like supplying evidence that the atmosphere has air in it. And, as I said, your own link supplies the evidence. You put it up after I asked to see some indication that Trump can back an idea, without talking about himself. It doesn’t even clear the goalposts.

My position here is very simple — and it CAN be challenged: If Republicans to manage to capture the White House, they will do it by arguing a certain idea or set of ideas makes sense. They aren’t going to do it by saying “vote for our guy, because that’s the in-thing this year.” Are you taking issue with that? Because the statement I’m making, which you obviously don’t like, is that you can select a Trump quote at random — and when you’re done parsing it, it will boil down to exactly that. I’m Trump, I’m great, I’m wonderful, my friends are swell, we’re awesome and those other guys suck, blah blah blah, and you can tell it because we’re popular and those other guys aren’t liked as much as we are.

See, people are either sick and tired of it like I am, or else they’re not. If they’re sick and tired of it, then it’s time to talk about policies and the effects those policies have on the things that are important to us. In which case, Trump’s way of formulating arguments hurts more than it helps…and I’m right. If people are NOT sick and tired of it like I am, then Obama wins another term…and I’m right…either way, I’m not altogether sure of what your objection is here. You like Trump and I don’t? Okay, well we can still be pals.

But I don’t think Donald Trump can sell anything on the national stage, at this point. At all. Newt would be better off with an endorsement from Walter Mondale, than The Donald.
- mkfreeberg | 12/08/2011 @ 12:29
We’re going around in circles because you’re engaging in a lot of bloating and posturing that might be appropriate if you actually brought some evidence to support your position, which as I understand it is that Trump is about ideas.

And you keep telling me your position is obvious because it is self-evident. Obviously it isn’t, if I’m here questioning it. I’ve mentioned some policy concerns he has that have nothing to do with personality – business regulation, domestic drilling, trade with China. If you were reading the Limbaugh Letter, you’d know this. What, you want me to type in the whole three page interview? Those are exactly the sort of ideas we need to be hearing about from the likes of Newt, should the GOP have any chance of recapturing the presidency next year.

At this point, even if you’d read it, I think you’d go right on saying that Trump just goes around saying he’s awesome and that other people suck. I get it. In your “things I know” list, you said that a person tends to maintain his position not because of evidence, but because he wants to stay consistent. You’ve already gone on record saying that you think Trump is a loudmouth and it’s too late for you to back down. I get it.

You like Trump and I don’t? Okay, well we can still be pals.

Glad to hear it. And it’s not even that I like Trump all that much. I just didn’t (and still don’t) understand your problem with him. I don’t have any strong inclinations toward him one way or the other.
- cylarz | 12/08/2011 @ 12:41
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=48013

In his new book, Time to Get Tough, Trump addresses this issue head-on:

“I believe that any credible American foreign policy doctrine should be defined by at least seven core principles,” says Trump. “For starters, here is principle #1: American interests should come first. Always. No apologies. Principle #2: Maximum firepower and military preparedness…”

Trump adds: “Obama’s violations of these principles are bad enough, but they are much worse when you consider the epic foreign policy failures he has committed in his first three years in office. Most Americans have been so focused on all of Barack Obama’s economic failures and the disastrous effects of the Obama economy that they haven’t had the time to pay close attention to how much he’s screwed up American’s national security. But a closer look uncovers some alarming realities…”

How does that differ from anything you and I have been saying about Obama for 3 years now?
- cylarz | 12/08/2011 @ 12:49
Well, if I have to go digging for it, it’s pretty safe to say Mr. Trump isn’t crafting a message out of it, right?

Trump got in a lot of trouble during his run, because of his earned reputation as a flip-flopper. Now I’m not going to begrudge a man going off and changing his mind when it makes sense to do so; the thing is, there are matters of principle here. If someone opposes ObamaCare because he thinks he’s Mister Wonderful and he happens to dislike ObamaCare, I can’t trust him to stick to that over the long term. If he opposes ObamaCare because he recognizes the United States as a country that enshrines the American can-do competitive spirit, and socialized medicine runs counter to this, then I’d be much more comfortable about supporting him.

This is the vibe that’s missing — on the issues where Donald Trump agrees with me. Of course, when he doesn’t agree with me, the situation’s even worse…but when he agrees, it’s like he’s taking my side on the issue, but Barack Obama’s side as far as the vision for how the country should be run.

Sorry if I didn’t make this clear. I thought I’d spelled it out explicitly.
- mkfreeberg | 12/08/2011 @ 12:54
Actually, that does clear it up a bit.
- cylarz | 12/08/2011 @ 21:27

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