Thinking Citizen Blog — What just happened? The Republican Convention, JD Vance, And The Future Of The World
Thinking Citizen Blog — Sunday is Political Process Reform, Campaign Strategy, and Candidate Selection Day
Today’s Topic: What just happened? The Republican Convention, JD Vance, and the future of the world
These, my friends, are crazy times. Wow! A cocktail joke not so long ago, Mr. Trump became President of the most powerful nation on earth, was disgraced, died, and was buried and now has risen like a Phoenix from the ashes to become an unstoppable juggernaut unless the Democrats get their act together fast, pulling a rabbit out of their top hat, so to speak.
So will the rabbit be Harris-Schapiro? Or even more implausibly Harris-Romney? Or will Biden stick it out, driving the center into the arms of the orange 8th wonder of the world? Will turnout plummet? Will it reach new heights?
Crazy times. Today, excerpts from an article by never-Trumper Bret Stephens of the New York Times.
Also recommended reading are the second two links below — an article by David Brooks (NYT) and Peggy Noonan (WSJ). What is the best article you have read on the events of the last week?
What do you know about JD Vance that the rest of us may not but probably should? See fourth link below for a list of 27 facts compiled by the New York Times.
The next four weeks could be pivotal in the history of the planet. “This is big history. Hold on to your hat.” (Peggy Noonan)
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
THE BEST OPENING OF ANY OP-ED PIECE EVER — can you match it? if so, please share…
1. “In November 2022, after the Republicans’ lackluster showing in the midterms, I wrote a column titled “Donald Trump is Finally Finished.” I keep a printed copy on my desk as a humbling reminder of how wrong I can be.”
2. “How did Trump go from a disgraced has-been — even Fox News’s Laura Ingraham implied he was putting his “own grudges ahead of what’s good for the country” — to the man of destiny he had become even before he dodged that bullet on Saturday?”
3. “A simple explanation goes something like this: the GOP ceased to be a normal political party in 2016 and became a cult of personality, less interested in winning elections than in burnishing the savior-victim myth of the charismatic leader. As a cult, the party could never realistically allow any other Republican to successfully challenge Trump for the nomination. And as a nominee, Trump would only gain strength once the extent of President Biden’s mental decline became obvious.”
NB: ‘But this analysis, true to a point, falls short in at least three respects. It doesn’t give Trump the political credit he deserves. It fails to reckon with the Biden administration’s political blunders. And it reduces the Democrats’ problem to a Biden problem. Their problem is bigger than that.”
WHAT DOES TRUMP STAND FOR? DEFIANCE. DEFIANCE OF WHAT? DEFIANCE OF “THE GATEKEEPERS OF CULTURAL RESPECTABILITY.” AND WHO ARE THEY?
1. “They are the reporters who said it was a “conspiracy theory” to suggest Covid emerged from a Chinese lab.”
2. “Or the academic deans who insist every job applicant write DEI statements and refuse to hire those who criticize them.”
3. “Or the do-gooders who charge that Americans who want better control of the southern border are motivated by racism.”
NB: “Or the pundits who say, as one NBC contributor put it in 2016, “100 per cent of Trump voters are deplorable.
Or the journalists who claimed that “inflation is good for you.”
BIDEN BETRAYED HIS PROMISE TO UNITE THE COUNTRY, INSTEAD DIVIDING A COUNTRY BY DEMONIZING THE OPPOSITION AND USING THE LEGAL SYSTEM TO WAGE WAR AGAINST IT
1. “In September 2022, he delivered a blistering speech against “MAGA Republican” whom he accused of threatening “the very foundations of our Republic.” But did he mean the Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 — or those who were “MAGA Republicans” mainly by virtue of voting for Trump? It wasn’t clear. A speech that should have distinguished the two wound up conflating them. It cast tens of millions of Americans as if they were enemies of democracy itself.”
2. “More foolish was the effort of Democrats to try to “defend democracy” by seeking to kick Trump’s name off ballots — a fine instance of destroying the village in order to save it — while pursuing Trump in court. Whatever the merits of the many cases against him, the bad effort to embarrass, paralyze, and ultimately criminalize a political opponent smacked, to millions of Americans, as a much graver danger to democracy than, say whether hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels constituted a campaign finance violation.”
3. “If his name was not Donald Trump, and if he wasn’t running for president — I’m the former AG in New York. I’m telling you that case would’ve never been brought.” Andrew Cuomo told Bill Maher last month. “And that’s what is offensive to people. And it should be. Because if there’s anything left, it’s a belief in the justice system.”
NB: “Finally, the Democratic Party itself, which keeps insisting it’s morning in American when poll after poll shows a country that thinks it’s darkness at noon. On the eve of the pandemic, 45% of Americans were satisfied with the way things were going, according to Gallup, the highest percentage in 15 years. Now it’s 21 percent. That gap alone explains why Trump looks to be on his way to victory.”
Opinion | The Secret of Trump’s Resurrection
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/opinion/trump-biden-authoritarianism.html
Opinion | Republican National Convention Is a Trumpian Triumph
27 Facts About J.D. Vance, Trump’s Pick for V.P.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to political process or campaign strategy or 2020 candidate selection or anything else for that matter.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day or change their thinking. Or to consolidate in your own memory something worth remembering that might otherwise be lost. Or to clarify or deepen your understanding of something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to the depth of thought.
