Category Archives: culture

“The Trump Doctrine”

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That’s the title of The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial last Sunday about President Donald Trump’s general foreign policy.  They’ve misunderstood it, though, beginning with their subheadline:

With this President, the diplomacy is always personal.

Well, of course it is. Just as all politics are local, so all diplomacy is personal: the principals must know who each other are and the degree to which they can trust each other.

And this:

President Trump believes in personal diplomacy and showmanship above all in foreign policy….

Well, no. Trump sees personal diplomacy and showmanship as necessary early, if not first, steps in foreign policy.  Establishment diplomats and policy “experts” are too used to conducting matters quietly and behind the scenes—and they have an unblemished record of failure in serious policy matters in areas, for instance, related to Iran, the People’s Republic of China, and northern Korea. Starting things out in a highly publicized—showman-ized—manner prevents those diplomats from hiding behind their comfortable gentility as they perpetuate their useless chit-chat.

And finally this:

But Mr Trump’s public canoodling with Mr Putin is still a sorry spectacle.

It’s amazing that journalists of the NLMSM—including those of the WSJ—still, after all these years, remain so self-absorbed that they can’t recognize when they’re being trolled.

Nike Fail

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Nike has signified its agreement with Colin Kaepernick‘s assessment that Nike’s planned Betsy Ross-flagged shoe, intended to be released for Independence Day celebrations, was offensive to some by canceling the release.  Kaepernick’s claim was that

he and others felt the Betsy Ross flag is an offensive symbol because of its connection to an era of slavery

Never mind that, were it not for those evil slavers who founded our nation and fought for our independence, we’d still be dealing in slavery and indentured servitude—and guess what would be the lot of current immigrants, legal and illegal.

Kaepernick knows all of this, he’s a K-12 graduate, and he attended college while he played semi-pro football before joining the NFL. He’s just in his current game for his ego now, and out of his desperation to be relevant.

On the other hand, the members of Nike’s management team have not just shown their pretense of ignorance, they’ve demonstrated—at the very least—their cowardice, both individually and as a group.

Arizona’s Republican Governor, Doug Ducey, has taken a proper response, canceling State-originating tax breaks for a planned Nike factory in the State.  He went on:

Instead of celebrating American history the week of our nation’s independence, Nike has apparently decided that Betsy Ross is unworthy, and has bowed to the current onslaught of political correctness and historical revisionism,

It seems to me that Nike’s decision to cancel the Betsy Ross flag shoe is offensive to many.  Nike should respond by reissuing the shoe at a discount.

Nike won’t.  That leaves it up to the rest of us.

All of us should stop doing business with Nike.  Its management team has rendered the company useless and a party to racism. All at the behest of a…person…who’s not only not on Nike’s board; he’s not even a shareholder.  He’s just an endorser—which means Nike is paying him to make the decision to cancel an Independence Day celebration that honored a key player in our independence struggle.

Our current national flag, as an evolution of the Betsy Ross flag, also is “connected to an era of slavery”—maybe we should cancel it, too.  Oh, wait—Kaepernick already is trying for that, with his shameful knee-taking while our national anthem plays and our flag is raised.

None of us should pay any further attention to Kaepernick: his is just another example of cynically manufacturing a racist beef where no beef exists.

Censorship

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James O’Keefe’s Veritas did some undercover work, produced a video of that work, and ran it on YouTube.  However, the exposé was of…Alphabet’s Google (which in turn owns YouTube), so YouTube took it down—Alphabet’s censors couldn’t stand the criticism.

The video seems to be back up a few hours later as I write this on the late afternoon of Tuesday.

However.

Alphabet’s attempt to censor, regardless of its (temporary?) failure, is wholly unacceptable, and it demonstrates Alphabet’s (as the owner of Google and YouTube) dishonesty and cowardice.

How is it possible to trust an organization so precious, so self-important, that it can’t even handle criticism of itself?

A Bit about Hate

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Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Cory Booker (D, NJ) has accused President Donald Trump of being hateful and running a campaign based on hatred.  He warned his fellow Progressive-Democrat candidates not to run on hatred, but on love.

Booker is right about some of that.  Progressive-Democrats and Republicans (and Greens, Libertarians, etc) are unlikely to win much of anything campaigning on hate.

Yet it’s Senator Spartacus who, along with the rest of his Party, preach the divisiveness and hatred of Party’s racist and sexist identity politics.

It’s Senator Spartacus who hatefully distorted Biden’s words about being able to work with anyone, even segregationists and racists, when the task was important enough into Spartacus’ own manufactured racist beef—and pettily, too, for no other end than his own personal political gain.

Would Biden be able to work even with such a one as Cory Booker?  That’s far from certain.

Beyond that, the only ones preaching about hate are the Bookers, the Harris, and the rest of the Progressive-Democratic Party.  Others are talking about accomplishments and policies.

Where, indeed, is this love from the Progressive-Democrats? As Spartacus himself has demonstrated, they even hate their own.

Trump and the New York Times

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In one of a series of Letters to the Editor in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal, one letter writer decried both President Donald Trump’s and the NYT‘s words.  It’s a false comparison, though.  The letter writer wrote in the Trump part of his comparison

President Trump’s use of the word “treason” to characterize the Times, and his attempts to misuse government authority to retaliate against journalists must end, full stop.

This is a cynically misleading claim. Trump did not use the word “treason” to characterize the NYT; he used the phrase “virtual treason” to characterize the NYT‘s behavior.

Trump is well-known for disdaining euphemisms, for preferring plain, blunt speech.  If he had meant to say the NYT was a treasonous institution, he would have said so.  Beyond that, “virtual” treason is not treason; it describes behavior that might look like treason in a purely metaphorical way.  Full stop.

Regarding retaliation, Trump has never had his surveillance apparatus spy on journalists’ emails, nor has he ever thrown a journalist in jail or harassed a journalist’s mother. Again, full stop.

Nor has Trump ever tried to bar an entire news organization from its news collection duties at the White House. A third time, full stop.