If any doubt lingered in the tiny recesses of your mind that Donald Trump is up against a massive tsunami of bias and hatred, the reporting that has surrounded the announcements of Trump’s successful battle with the Wuhan Chinese Red Death aka Covid 19 removes any reason to believe that the media is playing this straight. Most of the media and most Democrat politicians are deranged. The anger and venom they spew at Trump on a 24-7 basis is without precedent in the history of the American Presidency. Not even Lincoln, who was called a “gorilla” and a “baboon” by his own Secretary of War, has endured such calumny. Trump’s situation reminds me of this encounter between a pretend President (Bill Pullman) and a space alien in the movie, Independence Day:
Donald Trump is not dealing with the normal mix of partisan Democrat politicians and a media elite. He is up against a crazed mob of delusional, unhinged haters. Unless he dies, there is nothing Donald Trump can do to satisfy or placate his opponents.
If Trump produced a cure for lung cancer he would be derided for harming pulmonologists and cancer researchers.
If he raised someone from the dead he would be denounced for hurting undertakers and grave diggers.
If he replicated Jesus’ miracle of feeding the multitudes with loaves and fishes, he would be guilty of pushing gluten and triggering vegans.
But Trump, notwithstanding media claims, does not see himself as the new incarnation of the Son of God. He’s just happy disrupting the conventional wisdom and doing concrete things that benefit real people. But the pathetic mainstream media give Trump no credit for real, substantive accomplishments. The list includes:
Signing a bipartisan bill in December 2019 that permanently provides more than $250 million a year to the nation’s historically black colleges and universities.
Overseeing an economic recovery prior to the Covid pandemic that produced the lowest jobless rate for Hispanics (3.9% in September 2019) and African Americans (5.5%).
Pushed criminal justice reform that led to the release of mostly black American inmates incarcerated under a crime bill pushed by Joe Biden. This included the commutation and pardon of Alice Marie Johnson.
Moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, delivering on a promise made by previous Presidents and then negotiated a peace agreement between Israel and two Arab gulf nations.
Accelerated the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and Iraq and reduced the number of drone strikes.
Under Trump’s leadership, in 2018 the U.S. surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest producer of crude oil.
Trump signed the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act” (FOSTA), which includes the “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act” (SESTA) which both give law enforcement and victims new tools to fight sex trafficking.
Trump signed an executive order this year that forces all healthcare providers to disclose the cost of their services so that Americans can comparison shop and know how much less providers charge insurance companies. Hospitals will now be required to post their standard charges for services, which include the discounted price a hospital is willing to accept.
He created a White House VA Hotline to help veterans and principally staffed it with veterans and direct family members of veterans. VA employees are being held accountable for poor performance, with more than 4,000 VA employees removed, demoted, and suspended so far.
Under normal circumstances, these accomplishments would be grudgingly praised by political opponents. But not now. Anything that Trump does is evil and worthless according to the new Democrat political calculus.
The straw that has broken the back of any hope of civility and humanity from Democrats is Trump’s triumph over Covid. He had the audacity to contract the disease and disrupt the Democrat meme that Trump’s Covid policy is the equivalent of Hitler’s SS dropping poison gas into gas chambers packed with Jews. It is sickening and disgusting.
The reality is that Trump benefited from the drugs that his Covid Task Force has been pushing to develop and deploy. Even without a vaccine, Trump’s recovery gives tangible evidence that recovery from Covid is possible. In fact, according to the actual data, most people–even those 65 and older–have a robust chance of surviving and recovering.
Rather than deal with the facts, the media and Democrat mob are attacking Trump for not wearing a mask. Yet, these same concern trolls are deaf, dumb and blind in commenting on prominent Democrats who self-righteously preached the necessity of wearing a mask but were photographed in public doing the opposite. We have Nancy Pelosi parading maskless through a San Francisco hair salon. We have Diane Feinstein strolling through airports in California and Washington, DC sans mask. And then there is black face Virginia Governor Ralph Northem, exhorting Virginians on the horrors of not wearing a mask and then, the next day, walking through a crowd in Virginia Beach with no mask. Days later Northem announced he had the Covid. Any condemnations of him on being a “super spreader?” Nope. Crickets.
Diane Feinstein
Ralph Northem
But it is not only the clueless Democrat leaders preaching one thing and doing another. The media also is guilty of the same hypocrisy. Tucker Carlson showed a photo tonight (Tuesday) of the moron CNN anchor, Chris Cuomo, who feigned outrage over Trump taking off his mask upon arriving at the White House, puffing on a cigar at the beach without a mask. I guess cigar smoke kills Covid.
Americans are not fools. They understand and repudiate this kind of dishonesty. If Donald Trump facilitated his children going overseas and securing a seat on the board of a corrupt Ukrainian gas company, there would be justified outrage. When Joe Biden’s dirty scion does it, we get the sounds of silence.
If Donald Trump’s son Eric received $3.5 million dollars from the Russian wife of the mayor of Moscow, he would be drawn and quartered and would deserve the flaying. But that’s what Hunter Biden did and the media remains mute.
We are now in a political world imagined in fantasy by Lewis Carroll. But this is reality. The saving grace for Trump is that the Democrats are behaving like a retarded Wile E Coyote.
They spend every waking hour dreaming up a new crackpot scheme to destroy Trump. But when they detonate their stink bomb they are holding it and end up immolating themselves. The Democrats and their media enablers stupidly believe that the majority of Americans don’t understand or comprehend this kind of dishonest duplicity. But I think they are wrong.
All
Yeah. The Demo thing is to condemn the staff at WR for letting him leave the hospital alive.
Col:
I wondered about his safety in a military hospital – given the behavior of the empty suit Esper, Miley and that collection of Obama brass retirees Mattis, Allen, Mcraven, McChrystal, Mullen et. al.
Lest you accuse me of crazy conspiracies, I refer you to the behavior of the national “security” apparatus since 2016 – that we KNOW about.
Larry,
As the soon to be banned Tucker Carlson put it recently, They offer fear, Trump offers hope. On a related note days after Governor Whitmer had all her post April 30 executive orders ruled unconstitutional by the MI Supreme Court the Washtenaw County (MI) Health Department head, Jimena Loveluck, MSW, issued a mandatory mask order for the county. (For the curious that MSW stands for Master of Social Work)
https://www.washtenaw.org/DocumentCenter/View/18270/Order-Face-Coverings-Oct-2020-FINAL
“the requirement to wear a face covering does not apply to individuals who:”…. “Cannot medically tolerate a face covering”
I wonder how all those businesses that demand you wear one will handle that exception? You’ll enjoy how CNN reported the MI Supreme Court Ruling: By a nice caption photo of a protest rally, featuring many Trump signs and yes, those black, hand-held personal safety devices Beto wants to round up. A protest from March, not October when the ruling was issued. For those unfamiliar with Michigan Ann Arbor is the most liberal city in the state and is home to the majority of Washtenaw County residents and the Univesity of Michgan. Eastern Michigan University is located in Ypsilanti, about ten miles East, though still in the county. At no time has any hospital in the county exceeded capacity nor are there reports of that being an issue now. I’m sure Trump’s recent illness and recovery is only coincidental.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/02/politics/michigan-supreme-court-whitmer-covid-emergency/index.html
Trump just declassified all the Russiagate documents. Timing is everything…
Colonel:
I have not seen any reporting of anyone condemning the staff at WR. I have seen, justified criticism IMO, of Dr Sean Conley, Trump’s personal physician. In particular, the criticism of Conley’s refusal to answer the press question about the date of the President’s last negative Covod-19 test – an essential fact needed in a contact tracing program as well as questions on his health impacting his fitness to perform his duties. It’s an important story. Answers to these basic questions is crucial to the public’s right to know.
Fred: At my job before I retired, there was a simple way of dealing with these sort’s of medical issues. Employees were required to bring in a signed medical waiver from a licensed physician. Those who couldn’t produce one were given a choice.
A simple requirement that often times resulted in some near miraculous changes in outlook.
Hold that thought, bears repeating: ….”He’s (Trump) just happy disrupting the conventional wisdom and doing concrete things that benefit real people.”….
Did the IC prevent many of the document declassifications because of worries about source and method protection? Or content or embarrassment, or need to cover up. Or because they were never asked.
What is the real risk, in comparative terms, when “declassifying everything”? Protect the presidency by declassifying, or protect the agencies. by not declassifying -assuming this is a sliding scale and we are now one minute to midnight.
What would McGyver do? In the world of AI and electronic espionage, is anything really protected 100% anyway? Truth will out, and always seek the truth and the truth shall set you free. I am all for freedom.
John 8:32 …“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
Mike46, methinks you want to know the minutiae of Trump’s health status for other reasons. Assume the WH is very much on top of contract tracing – they keep very good records.
Like all personnel matters, confidentiality is appropriate. Did you visit the WH or other events where you were in sustained contract with the President? Then you don’t have to worry.
There is no right to other people’s private health information, unless they chose to disclose it. HIPPA and all that. Just like you have no right to Trump’s tax returns. Transparency is good; but prudence is also good.
We do agree however, if you are going to put out private health information do it consistently and not the bit of a clown show that momentarily happened in this fast breaking story with a new cast of characters, who in fact did go bonkers over the information they did receive.
Was their concern over the President’s health- yes when running a temperature there is always a concern.
Was the use of supplemental oxygen a concern and is dipping one marker below normal a cause of alarm and need for leading newspapers to updater their Trump obituary on file as the NYT, WaPO and LA Times did? Only in the land of Democrat ginned up covid porn. No more concern than cruise passengers who always travel with their CPAP machines for “supplemental oxygen.
Media proved they could not handle the information that was revealed to them. Hope they work on that in the future, and they might get more. They need to work on scale and context. Or else I wouldn’t tell that pack of jackals I even had a hangnail.
Larry Johnson
Trump promised a superior replacement of Obamacare and proceeded to damage it as much as he could, harming the ususl people.
He initiated another war of choice, in the form of siege warfare, against Iran, adding to the dishonor that George Bush II had brought upon the United States with the war of choice against Iraq.
He has supported in practical terms another war of choice, by Saudi Arabia against Yemen. Without US and UK logistical help, the war would have ended in 2 weeks.
While he keeps on talking about the 8 trillion dollars wasted on wars against Islam, his own government spent in excess of 50 billion dollars in Syria. And for what purpose exatly?
He and his party failed, absolutely failed to pass an infrastructure bill to rectify the gradual sinking of the United States into a level comparable to Brazil’s.
And did he, as Commander in Chief, have to, absolutely have to, initiate and carry out this senseless confrontation against the Russian Federation? If one of his shiny airplanes that is buzzing the defences of the Russian Federation in the Black Sea is shut down, what is he going to do? Wage a thermonuclear war against a country that can annihilate the United States?
Wuhan Virus, the Red Menance and all of that fine propaganda points is not going to substitute for intelligent and dispassionate tax polcies that encourages production and investment. Unlike TDR and FDR, and just like Obama & Clinton, he left the cancer untouched and pumped the patient with multi-vitamins and stimulants; one-shot things.
He was, quite clearly, poorly advised but he owned that too. He did not want people smarter than himself to be around. And he owes his life to a taxpayer supported and staffed hospital, with “loosers” working hard to save him.
I do not exonerate the Democrats’ malfeasance but let us not make a saint of a man who clearly was not fit to be the President of the United States.
He talked a good talk, admitting, line Bernie Sanders, that US has very deep social and political, and cultural problems. But he offered no credible solutions. FDR he was not.
Babak makkinejad,
“Dishonor”? You seem to be traveling in a different universe and I’m afraid you’ve missed the point Mr. Johnson is making here.
Now all you have to do, is cap the first letter of you sure name and we’re good. You’ve come a long way, almost there.
Delusional
That’s one hell of a rap sheet, Babak. All true. What you say has been staring us in the face since Khan Shaykhun. In terms of what many of us were hoping for – I think you as well – this has not been a successful Presidency when we look back to what was implicit and sometimes explicit in the Trump 2016 election promises.
How could it be? The pressures on Trump have been so remorseless it’s a surprise he’s still there. His strongest supporters in Washington are out and out neocons. Also his most powerful opponents.
And if I am to judge from my own country, most in the electorate know nothing of the mayhem abroad that you write of; and of those that do, by far the greater part still swallow R2P.
In these circumstances, though it seems callous to say it as the civilian death toll mounts ever higher, small mercies can be all that’s on offer. There are one or two of those mercies visible and will be more if he gets a second term.
What of matters outside that murderous sphere of foreign policy? If one regards the American economy as a dead man walking then one approach is as good as another. If you think there’s life in it yet then Trump’s policies are superior to Biden’s.
On presentational style – I’ll take the New York property wheeler and dealer over the plastic PR politician any day. The genuine always trumps the fake.
So I do believe Trump wins hands down on the lesser of two evils argument. But are we not missing out on the central domestic issue of our times? In your country and mine this is the era of woke hysteria. No society can be subjected to that for too long and remain functional. I’m not sure how seriously Trump takes all that nonsense. But he’s one of the few who doesn’t go with it and these days that matters.
Larry
“The anger and venom they spew at Trump on a 24-7 basis is without precedent in the history of the American Presidency.” It has been awhile but I once read the telegrams sent to Truman after he fired General MacArthur. They were pretty vile if I remeber correctly.
Does the declassification order mean the documents would be made available somewhere or would a Foia request have to be made?
j.casey
Once de-classified they would be available for release by any competent authority.
@Babak makkinejad | 07 October 2020 at 12:46 AM
“but let us not make a saint of a man who clearly was not fit to be the President of the United States.”
OFXS! Who has been? Who is? Fitness is determined by milieu. Under Kali Yurga-esque conditions Golden Age/saintly virtues tend to be liabilities … fatal flaws, even.
Why do you presume folks need awareness raising of what he is not: it is a matter of essence versus isn’tce.
Trump reauthorized it’s declassification. He authorized it long ago and still nothing doing. That’s because people like Gina Haspel were involved and are now blocking its release, but she’s being given a chance to say she acted unknowingly. That is alluded in Paul Sperry’s comment. Maybe she’ll smarten up, but the president should replace her in my opinion.
Larry,
As I know you’re aware, Trump’s claim that Obama has a phony birth certificate was actually started as a hoax by Hillary too. The goal was to sow doubts about Obama’s eligibility for the nomination and that got picked up later by the Right after Obama became president. Unlike with Trump, she didn’t have the media and political support to pull it off, the establishment wanted Obama as president even though Hillary had more votes in the primaries (Obama won because of the super delegates).
As for the Russia hoax, this was a stunt meant to turn the tables on Trump and make Trump appear naive or weak in dealing with rivals like Putin. Once Trump was in office, they took it to new a level. For Obama, it was about securing his legacy, for Hillary it was a chance to still become president by getting Trump impeached.
They never thought Hillary would lose. She was suppose to win. I think they intended to threaten people on the right as Russian stooges if she had won. She wasn’t going to suffer the fate her husband had. She was going to get revenge, like they did to Kavanaugh in his Supreme Court confirmation with those fake allegations of sexual assault by that dingbat Ford. I think that was part of their calculus too.
noel grennell
I don’t know how you do it in Leinster, but on SST a comment that is simply “delusional” is insufficient and in the future will not be posted.
rjj
George Herbert Walker Bush was the man most qualified to be the President of the United States in the 20-th century.
FDR had greatness thrust upon him.
Nixon dropped the ball, but until then he was not as bad as his enemies make him to be.
Mike46,
My bank is not my employer, neither is a gas station, or a hair salon – just ask the one Nancy’s supporters drove out of business for pointing out her own failure to live up to her own rules – nor do any of them have lawful authority to require me to get signed note from a licensed doctor.
What’s the county death count from not wearing a mask in Walmart, HomeDepot or even when signing for that Amazon order that got delivered to your door in April, May, June , July, August, September; right up to Governor Whitmer losing a supreme court case three days prior to the fine Master of Social work department head issuing this order.
Cofer
You be an Israeli? Stealing Palestinian’s land – no Honor among Thieves.
English Outsider
As the Bard says:
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Well, a quick read of the comments produces the usual bunch with TDS symptoms. At this point, there is zero changing of minds or votes no matter what Trump may do. What Biden does is clear – he has to keep his profile low, with the Ukraine having already spilled Bidens Beans all across the proverbial table.
Look – I do not care for Trump. But the things he has done in spite of the all-in media, RINO, unelected bureaucrat and Democrat wall of shit thrown at him since election is nothing short of illustrative. He had zero reason to jump into the race, especially after his previous exploration into the office. He had nothing to prove, no big money to be made – he could have spent the last decade golfing and leisurely enjoying the rest of his life.
So he has an agenda – and I think disruption of the current cadre of folks ‘on the skim’ is a part of it. I got no idea the why of it for him personally, but the actions outlined above clearly show he is doing his best to institute changes, in particular the removal of some very corrupt judges and RINOs.
I have been independent for 30 years – the red and blue teams have essentially remained the same horse with differing saddles since Nixon. Trump is neither red nor blue – he is an equal opportunity disruptor He has his own ideas, but upsetting feed troughs seems to be a particular delight for him – and I am all for that.
The media outlets, with their aversion to international news and their focus on Trump have become useless vestigial organs, and their bias is clearly visible. Even Democrats have agreed that media is biased in their favor (status quo). They have all said and done some very unconstitutional things.
The FBI, CIA and DOJ have clearly shown they are not under the control of the Executive – internally they are likely as divided as the country appears to be – to the point that they are non-functional. Meuller and the entire Russiagate fiasco was money pissed down the proverbial well – only lawyers profited.
Now the election is fairly well set up to be decried as null by either red or blue parties – so we are looking at quite a mess over the next few months. Assuming Biden is declared winner, we will have a chief executive who is proven a corrupt liar who is quickly bought off, and who is obviously mentally incompetent – if not the largest walking gaffe since Dan Quayle…
interesting time we are in…
I’m inclined to agree with Babak on this one, although my vote is still going to Trump. I voted to get a wall, and all we are getting is enhanced Obama/Bush fencing. You can use that as an apt analogy for any of Trump’s policies, meet the new boss same as the old boss. SJWing of american culture starting with indoctrination in public school continues unabated. Why did it take Trump 4 years to cut the federal funding for critical race theory and other such crap? He just does not care. Dem obstruction aside, he could have gotten the wall through in the first year of his presidency, much like Obama could have muscled through a much more socialist version of Obamacare.
Serge
You must be seeing different pictures than I. It certainly looks like wall to me.
fakebot and others concerning Pres. Trump’s reauthorization of information sans redactions.
This brings to my mind the famous line from the movie 2001, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”. Unless he orders this release, perhaps necessarily aided by removal of the obstructionists from their posts, expect yet more whining and manuevering in the continuing campaign to “protect the institutions”.
Well, these “institutions” have been directly involved in illegalities and, dare I say it, sedition against the Constitutional order. In what precisely consists the value of preserving these “institutions” given these realities? They appear to think of themselves as another level of checks and balances ommitted through an unfortunate oversight from the framing of the Constitution. This appears to me to be another aggrandizement against the People, not unlike that so often seen in the Judiciary; nowhere to be found in the black letter law, but “serious, expert authorities” leap to their duty to thwart the delineated authorities of that superannuated Constitution.
So, we shall see, shan’t we?
Fred:
I’m going to put it as simply as I can: You have no 1st Amendment right to endanger public health or safety. That was resolved long ago.
Mike46,
I agree. All who refuse to wear masks for 1st amendment reasons are endangering public health and safety. Not wearing one for other reasons, such as Fauci at the baseball game, Pelosi at the hair salon, or ‘mostly peacefull’ protesters everywear. Or those medically incapable of wearing one per a licensed doctor’s note.
I would be more concerned about breaches of personal privacy while Trump was at Walter Reed, going through daily routines with unknown staffers, eating, bathing, bathroom habits etc – all eager to run to Bob Woodward with their exclusive inside stories and hidden video cam recordings.
It is hard to live in a world 24/7 where you can trust no one. No one. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
We should be grateful, not shocked, when Trump still makes spontaneous and relational outbursts because this means has not yet become a cowering, equivocating, paranoid blob after living for four years this very curious WH isolation cell with the hostile media on his back every day.
Babak, I’ll raise you 300 new federal judge appointments, including three Supreme Court judges. Your move. But please watch 27 episodes of SNL’s Debbie Downer played by Rachel Dratch before you get back to me.
BTW, you sound like you were raised Scandinavian, and not the Middle East persona your name suggests. Punish the one B on the report card but never praise the 7 A’s. Garrison Kiellor’s Lake Woebgon explains it all – with the footnoted treatise on 100 things wrong with being raised Scandinavian. We are by nature a very gloomy lot. Life feels safer being miserable. Therapy helped.
A systems analyst postulated in his book about Transitions. There are three phases and they can never be taken out of order: Mourning- Chaos- New Beginnings.
Our country is hovering between stage one and stage two – right on schedule. Until we finish mourning, we cannot proceed out of chaos. Trump wants us to move forward, Democrats want us to move backwards.
Which is why this current election is critical, and “covid” hysteria is symptomatic as well as symbolic of the real struggle between two worlds, outlooks, futures and personal commitments we are now making for ourselves.
Move back to the Obama era where the government and his doppel-ganger Julia are dependent upon it for all things and all life decisions. Or the braver new world Trump is ushering in, where personal accountability, risk and consequence brings the rewards of freedom and independence.
One feels safe but it is not; the other feels scary, but in fact is liberating.
Deap
I have heard this point made by many others; vote Republican lest the Democrats stuff the Supreme Court with their kind.
But don’t you see? Even that position points to the dysfunction of the Legislature and indirectly, to the incommensurate notions of the Justice that so many among the US Electorate subscribe to.
Such a diversity is not resolvable – by the very definition of Justice – one cannot adjudicate among incommensurable qualities.
US Congress can pass a Law and make Abortion legal – it would thus take that hot potato out of the Judicial Branch of US Government. But there is no chance of that.
US Congress can reclaim its prerogative to declare war or peace, but has, in fact, abdicated that constitutional role – in as much as I understand US system.
That only leaves the only game in town – controlling who is going to become the Supreme Magistrate of the United States; i.e. the President of the United States; an appeal of legalisms when what is needed – in my opinion – is a fundamental policy assessment and re-assessment.
It is like in business contract, by the time one has invoked the legal stipulations of the contract, one has lost the Customer – and with it – a ton of money too.
The Electorate – in any system of representative government – must exercise a sort of self-questioning: “What is that we want from the World? How much would that cost? Can we even obtain it? Is it worth it?”
Colonel,
I’ve seen them cut through it, I’ve seen them climb it, I’ve seen it fall over in the wind(granted, the concrete base wasn’t fully set in that instance, but still). I was never expecting the whole 9 yards with a parapet and a moat, but let’s call it for what it is: sturdy fencing. And from the latest info I can find, 90% of it is built in areas with existing “dilapidated” Obama/Bush fencing. When the hordes from Africa, ME , and Asia start taking planes and boat rides en masse to south america to cross over to the US and Canada(refer to the uptick of this phenomenon in the past couple years, it is only the beginning), Trump’s wall in its current state won’t stop them.
An important point is being missed: Trump did not require the declassification of the records; he only “authorized” their declassification. Big difference.
I am not an ex-federal government employee. I am an ex school district employee who had to put up with the meddling of the NEA.
As a citizen, I know that many feel that they each have to give the caveat that they do not really like Trump before they say that they approve of something that he has done.
I read ALL of Dickens’ novels. I believe Trump would have been a perfect public figure for Dickens to portray in a novel, something he did quite well. I loved all of Dickens’ characters, even the nasty ones. I think Trump would have been portrayed by Dickens in a favorable light. There is a good reason that many of the people in the large MAGA-hat wearing crowds shout “We LOVE you” in unison to him. They know it must hurt to have all that vitriol and just condescension aimed at him.
I would be yelling that too in the Christian sense of agape if I ever had the chance to be in one of those crowds. He is what Middle America has wanted: Someone who is NOT from the DC government swamp or the East Coast so-called news outlets, much less the hair-brained California Democrats.
Many have had an obnoxious uncle who sometimes drove us crazy; however, when it counted his heart and his actions were smart, unselfish and kind and good. I think that is what the crowds seen in Trump.
Babak,
The Electorate – in any system of representative government – must exercise a sort of self-questioning: ‘What is that we want from the World? How much would that cost? Can we even obtain it? Is it worth it?’
The American electorate has been spared this self-evaluative framework by two (possibly three) generations of candidates for public office falsely telling us, the people, that there are no difficult choices and trade-offs to be made in our desires and expectations from government. There are too few of us in the electorate who recognize, as Thomas Sowell puts it, that in economics (indeed, in most of life’s thorny predicaments) there are no true solutions, but only trade-offs.
We have created a world so thoroughly shot through with narcissistic, solipsistic self-indulgence that we consider the burden of making difficult decisions to be a form of injustice that must be eliminated from the course of our individual and national lives. So naturally, we follow charlatans who promise us that they can actually accomplish this Messianic feat.