Half or a quarter of the way through this interesting experiment with an incessantly splenetic presidency, much of the nation has become accustomed to daily mortifications. Or has lost its capacity for embarrassment, which is even worse. If the country’s condition is calibrated simply by economic data — if, that is, the United States is nothing but an economy — then the state of the union is good. Except that after two years of unified government under the party that formerly claimed to care about fiscal facts and rectitude, the nation faces a $1 trillion deficit during brisk growth and full employment. Unless the president has forever banished business cycles — if he has, his modesty would not have prevented him from mentioning it — the next recession will begin with gargantuan deficits, which will be instructive. The president has kept his promise not to address the unsustainable trajectory of the entitlement state (about the coming unpleasant reckoning, he said: “Yeah, but I won’t be here”), and his party’s congressional caucuses have elevated subservience to him into a political philosophy. The Republican-controlled Senate — the world’s most overrated deliberative body — will not deliberate about, much less pass, legislation the president does not favor. The evident theory is that it would be lèse-majesté for the Senate to express independent judgments. And that senatorial dignity is too brittle to survive the disapproval of a president not famous for familiarity with actual policies. Congressional Republicans have their ears to the ground — never mind Winston Churchill’s observation that it is difficult to look up to anyone in that position. The president’s most consequential exercise of power has been the abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, opening the way for China to fill the void of U.S. involvement. His protectionism — government telling Americans what they can consume, in what quantities and at what prices — completes his extinguishing of the limited-government pretenses of the GOP, which needs an entirely new vocabulary. Pending that, the party is resorting to crybaby conservatism: We are being victimized by “elites,” markets, Wall Street, foreigners, etc. President Trump has irreversibly changed the Republican Party. The upheaval might seem unusual, but as Opinion writer Robert Gebelhoff explains, political transformations crop up throughout U.S. history. (Adriana Usero, Danielle Kunitz, Robert Gebelhoff/The Washington Post) After 30 years of U.S. diplomatic futility regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the artist of the deal spent a few hours in Singapore with Kim Jong Un, then tweeted: “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” What price will the president pay — easing sanctions? ending joint military exercises with South Korea? — in attempts to make his tweet seem less dotty? By his comportment, the president benefits his media detractors with serial vindications of their disparagements. They, however, have sunk to his level of insufferable self-satisfaction by preening about their superiority to someone they consider morally horrifying and intellectually cretinous. For most Americans, President Trump’s expostulations are audible wallpaper, always there but not really noticed. Still, the ubiquity of his outpourings in the media’s outpourings gives American life its current claustrophobic feel. This results from many journalists considering him an excuse for a four-year sabbatical from thinking about anything other than the shiny thing that mesmerizes them by dangling himself in front of them. Dislike of him should be tempered by this consideration: He is an almost inexpressibly sad specimen. It must be misery to awaken to another day of being Donald Trump. He seems to have as many friends as his pluperfect self-centeredness allows, and as he has earned in an entirely transactional life. His historical ignorance deprives him of the satisfaction of working in a house where much magnificent history has been made. His childlike ignorance — preserved by a lifetime of single-minded self-promotion — concerning governance and economics guarantees that whenever he must interact with experienced and accomplished people, he is as bewildered as a kindergartener at a seminar on string theory. Which is why this fountain of self-refuting boasts (“I have a very good brain”) lies so much. He does so less to deceive anyone than to reassure himself. And as balm for his base, which remains oblivious to his likely contempt for them as sheep who can be effortlessly gulled by preposterous fictions. The tungsten strength of his supporters’ loyalty is as impressive as his indifference to expanding their numbers. Either the electorate, bored with a menu of faintly variant servings of boorishness, or the 22nd Amendment will end this, our shabbiest but not our first shabby presidency. As Mark Twain and fellow novelist William Dean Howells stepped outside together one morning, a downpour began and Howells asked, “Do you think it will stop?” Twain replied, “It always has.”
George Will is over on MSNBFAKEC ramping up the "Trump is mentally unfit" routine about Trump. Translation: Not looking good for Mueller prosecuting Trump. And this recent Buzzfake scam did not work out, so it's back to pumping up the old mentally unfit routine. George Will and Bill Kristol are seriously butt-hurt anti- trumpers. They gave long, boring, haughty lectures/reprimands to the American public all the way through the campaign about even thinking of voting for Trump. Then the people totally ignored them- which of course meant that they would never disappear but would just be carry on with their tripe over on MSNBC and CNN every week. Sorry that the FBI insurance plan and the Buzzfeed crap have not worked out for you George. You rant about preserving democracy but cheer for any means -legal and illegal- to bring down a lawfully elected president for who failed to get FBI approval before running. Oh, that's right. You and Bill Kristol are the guardians of true conservatism. Okay, so let's post a little something with entertainment value to help anyone who read that long boring post that UsualTard posted above to recover a bit, shall we? Your goal here to watch, George Will's blink-rate accelerate as Oreilly slaps him around. Lots of entertainment there.
I actually feel sorry for George Will. He let a distinguished career as a political pundit be destroyed over his annoyance that someone he viewed as a vulgarian became president. Of course, Will is reflective enough to know that Trump's popularity with actual voters spelled the end of the establishment country club republicanism that Will was so comfortable in. Kristol is another story. He has consistently pushed policies that hurt our country badly. Rather than justify them, he is part of the neo-con chorus who label anyone who disagrees as an agent of Putin, Iran, North Korea, etc. His first and perhaps only loyalty has been to Israel. That's ok but don't pretend those who disagree are traitors.
In this piece the erudite George Will, whom I have always found both brilliant and insufferable, showcases his rhetorical skill as masterfully as he ever has in his long career in political punditry. He comes very close indeed to the conclusion I recently came to without going all the way; namely, that our President acts as he does because he is a psychopath. He skirts the issue of mental health while calling our attention to a litany of the President's symptoms. Like the rain, it's going to end. How badly?, who can say. But as far as I'm concerned it can't end soon enough.
George Will's father was a professor of epistemology, which means that he was paid to be a professional gas-bag with a bad case of verbal diarrhea. The apple does not fall far from the tree.