Current Affairs

I hear all sorts of poorly expressed views about politics and politicians.
One complaint that surfaces is often expressed along the lines of how modern politicians are not great leaders. The discussion invariably involves a comparison between today’s politicians and earlier politicians. In the UK, the discussion would usually involve comparing current politicians unfavorably against Winston Churchill. In the USA, the current generation of Republican politicians are often compared unfavorably to Ronald Reagan (sometimes Dwight D. Eisenhower appears, among military veterans).
The comparison is misguided. It is misguided because I concluded many years ago, watching the rise and fall of Margaret Thatcher in the UK, that electors, except in wartime or a national crisis, do not want leaders. They want panderers. They want politicians who will validate their beliefs, tell them everything in the world is fine, fix stuff For Them and make their lives (as they see it) better. They don’t want grand visions, big ideas, or anything that represents real change. (The phrase “policy wonk”, which I heard being used all the time in reference to Al Gore in the 2000 race, was not intended as a compliment). They only want leaders in a time of crisis. The rest of the time they just want validation, and a steady hand in government. You can see that whenever politicians give speeches suggesting big ideas or the need for the country to change. Most commonly the airwaves fill with bloviators ranting about the politician in question being “condescending” or “talking down” to people.
When countries hit a crisis, and enough electors determine that, there are two possible course of action. They can vote for an established politician with a bold vision who promises to lead. Or they can vote for an insurgent, usually somebody with big ideas, a grand vision, compelling rhetoric and a promise to turn the place upside down.
In the UK, Winston Churchill successfully led the UK through World War II. He was an established politician who returned from almost-retirement to take charge at a difficult time. Later on, the UK voted for Margaret Thatcher, a similar established politician. Thatcher’s leadership was not to a lot of people’s liking, including mine, but she did respect the fundamentals of democracy.
Germany, in the early 1930’s, where the established political process was deeply dysfunctional and ineffective, chose instead to vote for an insurgent Austrian-German with charisma and a promise to make Germany great again. His name was Adolf Hitler. We know how that turned out for Germany and a lot of the Western world.
The two points here?
1. I don’t believe electors demanding leadership from politicians. Most of the time they want no such thing.
2. If you vote for an insurgent, do not expect the insurgent to respect established norms such as democracy and due process. That’s why they are an insurgent. They want to turn the place upside down.

With the recent revelations of boorish, misogynistic behavior and speech by Donald Trump (if you are surprised at these revelations, by the way, you have work to do when it comes to noticing narcissistic behavior from your fellow humans), his supporters and GOP partisans are becoming desperate as they attempt to rationalize their consistent intent to vote for him.
As a result, I am laughing out loud when I read some of the attempted justifications.
Dear Trump supporters, you’re embarrassing yourselves.
The argument “sure, Trump may be an asshole, but Hillary is just as bad!” is not credible. You know damn well it’s not. If your child’s school informed you that your child had misbehaved, providing compelling evidence of same, and the child’s response was “but mom, they did it too!”, you might be vaguely sympathetic, but that would probably only extend to saying something like “yeah, but you were caught and they weren’t”. Most likely you would be reminding your child that bad behavior has consequences.
Effectively, you are an adult playing the game of “but they do it too!”. Not credible. It makes you sound like that whining little schoolkid. Juvenile and unserious.
You’re not! I can hear you saying that as you read this.
Well good. Then wise up and try, you know, a better argument.
Ah! So Donald Trump is magically better because he never killed anybody? Like at Benghazi? And he never lost $6bn of taxpayers money?
Look, you can believe anything you like. You want to believe in tooth fairies, aliens from Mars, that the Moon landings were faked, and that Jade Helm was an abortive attempt by the Federal Government to take over Texas? Sure, go ahead and believe. But please don’t kid yourself that any of those beliefs deserve to be taken seriously by anybody with a well-developed set of reasoning and critical thinking skills. There is no compelling evidence to support any of them, and without compelling evidence, arguing otherwise, in many circles, soon makes you look both gullible and deluded.
Arguing that Hillary murdered 4 people at Benghazi is not supportable by any compelling evidence. If it was, somebody would have tried to indict her by now. Now, you can believe that she is being protected all you like, but the GOP has run seven (count them) investigations, and has yet to provide any compelling evidence.
Hillary lost $6bn of taxpayers money? Not even close. As this article explains, what actually happened was that an investigation revealed that the State Department lacked full documentation support $6bn of spending. Yes, that is bad. Negligent even. But saying you have no paperwork to support expenditure is not the same as saying that the expenditure was wasteful. Those are two different things, and if you continue to insist otherwise what you are really telling me is one or both of two things, neither of them flattering (a) you don’t understand the English language, (b) you chose to ignore the facts in favor of signing on to yet another cockanamie partisan narrative. Plus, if you are going to argue about losing money, you are going to crash and burn pretty damn quick. Donald Trump, based on numerous documented and detailed accounts of his business activities, has pissed away billions of dollars of other people’s money. That fiscal probity argument in favor of voting for him is utterly lacking in credibility. Best to not go there.
Look, I know that it is kind of difficult to support Donald Trump right now. Now that the media is catching up on actually, you know, digging into his past to the same level of exhaustive detail that they have been applying to Hillary Clinton for 25 years, some of the information that is emerging about his behavior is deeply unflattering. But you really have to do a much better job of argument. These rationalizations are like a psychologist exam to detect Motivated Reasoning 101. They are also an argument for voting based on nihilism. No positive endorsement of anybody. Only an argument that so-and-so is the Least Bad Option. Come on folks. There are well over 100 confirmed candidates for POTUS, excluding the cats, dogs and other weirdos. You should be able to find somebody to your liking there.

1. From an Iowa farm fair float

Deplorable: Indiana farm fair float depicts mock execution of Clinton at hands of Trump, Obama head as black statue https://t.co/4qVPujnYdP pic.twitter.com/OPkps8pT2T

— Borzou Daragahi (@borzou) October 4, 2016

2. This from a self-proclaimed Christian Trump supporter.
Although this is written like an old-fashioned telegram with the STOP words missing, the air of eliminationism is unmistakeable. (“left wing radicals as potential targets for becoming neutralized” is at best, slightly sinister).

I checked in with a friendly Trump supporter I met at a Christian bookstore in S.C. in February. He says this: pic.twitter.com/065GCuOhvt

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 4, 2016

This article from the Washington Post is a look at the worldview and mind of a Donald Trump supporter.
The most important commentary is this one by JJ MacNabb, who writes about anti-government and Sovereign Citizen groups in the USA. As she points out, there is usually one defining event in the lives of many anti-government supporters that convinces them that The System in its broadest sense is stacked against them, that they are never going to be treated fairly, and therefore the only right thing to do is to work to smash The System. In this case, the overturning of the woman’s $450,000 damages award for harrassment seems to have been the trigger for her becoming a fully invested supporter of smashing The System. Everything after that event is an illustration of how resentful and angry people are vulnerable to all manner of wild ideas and conspiracy theories. They then tend to embrace any and all conspiracy theories that start from the premise that an evil cabal is in charge. Hence the resurgence of ideas that overreaching government programs are a tool to subjugate the citizens (Jade Helm and Agenda 21) and the resurgence in popularity of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. It is a recycling of the whole New World Order/Illuminati/Jewish bankers world control trope, which is older than the 20th century, but persistently popular when nativism and racism become acceptable in public discourse.
UPDATE – for an illustration of what happens when people become fully invested in all manner of New World Order-based conspiracy theories, this guy’s Facebook page is a good illustration. He is pretty representative of the sort of people who signed on to the idea that Jade Helm was a covert attempt by the Federal Government to invade Texas.