House of Eratosthenes

1. The very first rule is to keep in mind at all times that, by default, the reaction to you being angry is either a) indifference or 2) laughter. That’s because “temper tantrum” is a term we use to describe the behavior of very small children. If you’re using one to get something you want, you have to change this dynamic somehow. Which brings us to…

2. Your temper tantrum M-U-S-T involve a cost, to someone, besides you. Someone in a position to fulfill your demand, or at least get things moving in that direction, has to be deprived of something they want. If this is not happening then you’re just embarrassing yourself.

3. The best way to throw a temper tantrum is always to go charging out of the room. Keep in mind though that you can only do this once. If you have to keep popping back into the room to remind people you’re still angrily charging out of it…that’s not providing incentive for change, that’s providing humor.

4. Remember that a temper-tantrum is a negotiation tactic. As such, you M-U-S-T give your opponent an out. What are the terms of their surrender that you’re offering? How are they supposed to bring your temper tantrum to an end? Your demand must be a) possible, b) practical, c) concise and d) clear.

‪#‎NeverTrump‬ folk have a lot of good points to make, so it’s a shame that they’re punchlines right now. They’re breaking all four of these rules. Making a logical decision from a plurality of undesirable options is one of the defining characteristics of maturity. Fantasizing about some other option being available, that isn’t, is a defining characteristic of immaturity. No, it doesn’t look “principled.” It looks like a little kid upset about the dinner menu, throwing a fit because he can’t have something else.

There are no party bosses, wringing their claw-like hands together in perplexed states of agitation, whining to each other about “Oh no! Bob out in Northern California doesn’t like his choices! We must find another! Donald Trump, stand down!!” Fun thought for you to have in your head if you’re Bob in California…but that is not happening.

Making a logical decision from a plurality of undesirable options is one of the defining characteristics of maturity.

Coulda fooled me, judging from the behavior of about 65% of all the “adults” in this ridiculous country of ours. I just realized that Trump is the first politician in about 30 years to embrace the concept of tradeoffs — “if you want this, you can’t have that, and that’s just how it is.” Witness the entire Left side of the political spectrum still insisting that the gazillion-dollar Obamacare boondoggle reduces costs and lowers taxes, because, you know, math really works like that. Honest!

Now, I haven’t listened to every speech Trump has ever made. I probably have never even heard the man speaking in other than soundbite form. But even reading the snippets of his very “worst” and most “outrageous” comments from full-time Trump-bashing sites like Ace of Spades, I still wonder what the hell these people are talking about. He’s not appealing to “hate,” “rage,” “bigotry,” or whatever* — or, at least, he’s not just doing that. He’s actually addressing the American people as if they were adults.

Adults know that jobs going to Salvadoran illegals at 30 cents an hour aren’t going to Americans at $5.15 an hour. Adults know that anyplace that imports a whole lot of young, single Muslim men can expect those young, single Muslim men to start exploding on city streets in the near future. And I’m pretty sure that adults realize — in a way no “conservative” pundit seems capable of — that cheap Chinese crap is cheap because it’s crap. Which — logically — means that those voters are willing to pay a few bucks more for something in the box that actually resembles its packaging, and works. But no, please, by all means, continue to assume that all of Trump’s supporters are just petulant children. Because that’s worked out so well for the GOP these past few years.
- Severian | 05/05/2016 @ 05:54
See, and I originally misread the title the first time as “Trumper Tantrum.”

Not sure how those of us that are conservatives writing in our votes for our preferred representative are “throwing tantrums.” I never signed up on the #Never Trump platform simply because I don’t throw tantrums and I already decided if my choice wasn’t selected I was going to vote my conscience by write-in. Our choices right now are a liberal-Democrat lying criminal who repeatedly fails at business, or a liberal-Democrat lying narcissist who repeatedly fails at business. Why would I vote for either one?
- P_Ang | 05/05/2016 @ 10:44
Well it isn’t just conservatives. But among those who want to go third-party or write-in just because it’s looking like Trump has a clear stretch to the nomination, there are two kinds, those doing it based on emotion and those doing it based on reason. Both fall under the umbrella of throwing a “tantrum,” and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You can’t define anything that’s a set or a classification without being able to say “this thing is not & cannot be a part of it.” A lot of times, to preserve the definition that is you, you have to make yourself the thing that can’t be part of something else and that would be a rational tantrum. This country is founded on one such thing. (“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”)

And as anyone who’s been reading these pages for awhile knows, I hold these truths to be self-evident that people — generally — are all of one or all of another. Solving problems by way of thought is as addictive as solving problems by way of feeling, these both become lifelong habits and one becomes more entrenched in the one habit or the other habit, the more one uses it throughout a lifetime. Now: Among those who are rejecting the Trump option because of emotion, I would hope they would be willing to admit that’s what they’re doing. If it’s not Trump, it will be Hillary, and I can see what’s wrong with that but darn it, I’m just so angry. That’s a tantrum, right? If it isn’t one, then nothing is.

That leaves those who are behaving this way as a conclusion of an exercise of thought. As you say, they’re voting their conscience and Trump is as distant from that ideal as Hillary. Why would they vote for either one, you ask? Answer: To participate in the election. What is the election? A referendum on liberalism — “Hey, I got a cool idea, let’s wreck some of our civilization and rebuild it all over again,” versus conservatism — “Doesn’t seem to be particularly well thought-out, let’s not do that & say we did or something.”

Some may protest, with traces of legitimacy, that an election is about many other things besides just that. To which I say, really? The election of 1992 was about a whole lot of things. But Bill Clinton “lost” it, in the sense that a lot more people voted against him than for him; and historically, that doesn’t matter even a tiny bit, right? This lesson from history has been repeated many other times, it certainly is not a ground-breaking idea…I would expect those who are dividing their own vote, as the outcome of an exercise of thought & not feeling, to have wrestled with this already. A divided vote on one side of a contest, favors the other side. This was one of the most potent arguments against a Trump nomination…while it was still an open question.

But my point is, nobody remembers such quibbles after an election is over. They barely even remember the fact that the vote was divided; certainly not within the political realm, in the first cycle afterward, when the leaders are figuring out how much each side must concede during the negotiations that ensue. They only remember the answer to “Go for the cool idea, or don’t do it & say we did?” That’s all.

Frankly, I can’t remember the last President who reflected my so-called “principles.” Reagan didn’t. George H. W. Bush certainly didn’t. I can certainly relate to the predicament, wherein all the candidates demonstrate ethical profiles that are different from mine. I can’t relate to the happy situation wherein I manage to find a candidate who doesn’t. If I did stumble across such a thing in appearance, I would be plagued with doubts about whether it reflected reality. Strikes me as a luxury that never was, and never can be.
- mkfreeberg | 05/05/2016 @ 21:27
I can see the point of people who say “Trump is nothing more than your basic gun-grabbing, abortion-loving liberal in a new and different suit.” That’s a reasonable read on his “record,” such as it is (the guy has never held elective office, so we can’t say how he voted on any given issue). But the style,now… we haven’t seen that since, probably, Andrew Jackson.

I don’t mean there haven’t been Populist candidates since Jackson (though none since the Gilded Age). But I do mean a revolutionary, game-changing style of the type that makes “political scientists” (HA!) declare the end of the whatever-Party-System-we’re-in-now. Just for starters, Trump’s candidacy means the end of the Culture Wars. “Conservatism” has been — in theory, of course, in theory — a combo of small-government types, Cold Warriors, and Evangelicals. In practice, it was kinda like an old-timey tricycle — Cold Warriors and Evangelicals were the big wheels up at the front, with the small govt types as the little bitty wheel in the back (the President being the barely coordinated child that kept steering the thing off the sidewalk and running into mailboxes). In the Bush era, Conservatism became a new-school tricycle, with ex-Cold Warriors, now calling themselves “neocons,” as the big wheel and the small govt types and Evangelicals as the two little wheels.

But now the neocons have been revealed as the government-loving, power-worshiping liberals they always were, and the Evangelicals have endorsed Trump or dropped out entirely. Trump hasn’t made a single Jesus-y noise that I’m aware of (other than proclaiming his favorite Bible verse to be “an eye for an eye” — you gotta admit, the man is an epic troll). So what’s left? Nationalists vs. Globalists. The Globalists — many of whom couldn’t wipe their asses without hitting a Republican’s head — are now openly declaring they’ll vote for Hillary. Meanwhile, the Nationalists are going Trump — even union goons, who have been Democratic stalwarts since approximately the Rutherford B. Hayes administration. Let me repeat that: Evangelicals have abandoned the culture war. Union goons are voting Republican. If these trends hold — and I know, I know, big “if” — we really ARE seeing a Great Magic Party Switch.

Think about that for a sec. Say what you will about his positions, Trump’s not just another liberal… because the word “liberal” doesn’t mean what it used to, and we won’t be able to figure out what it really means until all this is over. That’s yuuuuuge.
- Severian | 05/06/2016 @ 05:32

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Rules for Throwing Temper TantrumsThursday, May 5th, 2016

Rules for Throwing Temper Tantrums
Thursday, May 5th, 2016