The Establishments war on Donald Trump
See other The Establishments war on Donald Trump Articles
Title: Playing Four-Dimensional Chess With the Mooch
Source:
Weekly Standard
URL Source: http://www.weeklystandard.com/playi ... with-the-mooch/article/2009110
Published: Aug 3, 2017
Author: Jonathan V. Last
Post Date: 2017-08-03 12:16:34 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 10507
Comments: 45
Whatever else you want to say about Anthony Scaramucci, he was a character. Maybe not a good character, but a character nonetheless. And while the White House will be a better, more stable place with him gone, in a certain way, I’ll miss him. But Mooch’s brief moment strutting and fretting upon the stage provided a nice illustration of one of the aspects of Trumpism that I find most alarming. After Mooch was appointed, I had conversations with a couple pro-Trump friends who objected to my characterization of Mooch as being unprepared and ill-suited for the job of White House communications director. Their arguments to me went something like this: You say that the Mooch doesn’t have any relevant experience and that his temperament is unsuited for his job. But “experienced” guys like Sean Spicer are worthless and Mooch is crazy like a fox. He knows exactly what he’s doing and he’s a genius. Just like Trump, he’s playing four-dimensional chess. But the problem with the “four-dimensional chess” argument is that it’s unfalsifiable. And we saw this on Monday when Mooch was fired. Suddenly my pro-Trump friends were arguing that Mooch’s dismissal was a sign that Trump was being serious and bringing discipline to his White House. In short: Hiring Mooch was a stroke of genius. And firing Mooch 10 days later was also a stroke of genius. In other words, once you start seeing “four-dimensional chess” in one setting, you’re likely to see it everywhere. Consider, for instance, the South Carolina primary debate where Donald Trump accused George W. Bush of treason. Was Trump correct? Did Bush literally—not figuratively—commit treason? And if it wasn’t true, then was making this charge a foolish mistake? Rush Limbaugh didn’t think so. He divined a deeper strategy on the part of Trump that was brilliant in its complexity. Okay. So what about when Trump spent a week in a public fight with the parents of a dead American soldier? Was that a brilliant strategic maneuver, too? Or how about Trump’s decision to start publicly criticizing Attorney General Jeff Sessions? In each of these cases, my pro-Trump friends have assured me that Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. But my concern is that once you go down this road, it becomes impossible to pass judgment on anything Trump does or says. Every policy choice, every utterance, is right and smart and strategically sound simply because it comes from Trump. It’s almost as though Trump’s partisans have lost the ability to analyze actions or statements independent of their source. If Hillary Clinton had hired Anthony Scaramucci (who was a big donor to her, and Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, and John Kerry, and Harry Reid, and you get the picture) would that have been a subversively brilliant choice? Or is the choice only subversively brilliant because it’s Trump making it? In theory, it ought to be easy to wish Trump well and hope he achieves his agenda while simultaneously acknowledging his mistakes and shortcomings. Republicans used to do this all the time with their politicians. But there’s something about Trumpism that makes people insist that all the president does is play perfect baseball. He never makes a misstep and anything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault—the media, the Deep State, John McCain, Bob Mueller, Jeff Sessions. Take your pick. Which is why the Trump Train has always seemed less like a political movement and more like a personality cult. Even so, I’ll miss Mooch. The cult was more fun with him in the mix. Poster Comment: I too miss Mooch terribly. General Kelly is a killjoy. 
Anthony Scaramucci blowing a kiss after answering questions during the press briefing in the Brady Press Briefing room.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 25.
#2. To: Tooconservative (#0)
Well I was indifferent on Mooch until you posted the pics of those girly faggity sun glasses he wears. Knew he had to go then. And General Officers hate designer sun glasses. So that did Mooch in too.
Blowing kisses from the podium to the White House press corps was pretty gay too. Maybe Trump finally found a low-T guy he liked.
Not homo enough,or they would have demanded he remain. BTW,why do you confuse homosexuality with happiness?
I think it's 20-30 years too late to keep them from hijacking 'gay' to mean 'sodomy'.
Only because you let them. The Soviets were the masters of using "good" words to describe monstrous programs,and the homosexuals,most of whom are leftists,picked up on that and spun their image by calling themselves "gay",implying being a homosexual is a POSITIVE thing that makes you happy,which by extension means that if you AREN'T a homosexual,you must be sad and depressed. Poor boy! "GAY" means what it has always meant,it means "happy". A homosexual may or may not be happy,but they will always be a homosexual.
So when you go into town and someone says, "Hey, how are you today?" you'll just answer, "I'm feeling very gay.". But you don't, do you? When was the last time you told anyone that you were were feeling gay? Or that you had attended a gay party? Yeah, I didn't think so.
But you don't, do you? No,but only because it is a work I have never used in normal conversation. I have always said "happy",instead. I HAVE corrected a few homos I have heard describing themselves in public as being "gay" by telling them,"Gay" means happy. *I* am "gay",and you may even be gay too,but sexually,you are a homosexual and I have seen or known any homosexuals who were happy. Quit pretending you are something you aren't." Nobody has EVER won a fight,an argument,or even a discussion after allowing your opponent to control the language and the definitions.
So you admit that the sodomites never hijacked the word 'gay' from you to begin with. You make a good point but, as I said, you're at least twenty years too late to save the word 'gay'. Which no conservatives ever really liked to begin with until they started resented that the homos had adopted it.
Not really. It kinda pissed me off from the beginning,but I just assumed the offense was so obvious that everybody would start making fun of them,and they would stop that nonsense. It didn't happen,so I started getting militant about it. Words mean things,and words used as propaganda weapons MUST be challenged. We now have at least one generation grown to become adults who have never once associated the word "gay" with it's true meaning. To them it means "homosexual",and the subconscious message they get is that "homosexuals are happy,so if you want to be happy you should try homosexuality." The truth is you would probably have to go to a prison to find a group of people that unhappy on a daily basis. Their whole "lade dah,life is a cabaret" attitude is nothing more than a desperate attempt to convince themselves they are happy. I've had homosexual relatives (dead now) that I grew up around and knew they was something "off and desperate" about them from a time when I was so young I didn't know what sex was. The only doctor in the remote area I grew up in was a homosexual,and everybody knew it,despite him being married and having a daughter. He tried to make a move on me when I was about 12,and I threatened to hurt or kill him if he ever tried it again,and he didn't. He even told me once when he was in his late 70's and I was an adult that he wished he had been a heterosexual because his life had been so miserable. Good doctor that really cared about his patients. You just had to establish boundaries with him early. There may be a homosexual somewhere in the world that is truly happy with his or her life,but I doubt it. PLEASE note that I am not condemning them. If that is what they have to do,that is what they have to do,and so long as everyone involved is willing,it's none of MY business. I'm a live and let live guy.
The word 'gay' became most popular in reference to the 1890's, known as the Gay Nineties. So that generation and their children would refer to social events as gay. By the time the Forties and Fifties rolled around, 'gay' was a word your grandma might still use but not younger people. They might use words instead like 'chic'. Or by the late Fifties, 'hip'. The word 'gay' was a term no one was using any more by the time the homos took it on for themselves. I think it has something to do with the old homos and their insane love for Judy Garland but I've never been quite sure. It is interesting that the primary meaning of 'gay' was "cheerful, lighthearted, joyful, stylish". Now that has become officially the secondary meaning. And young people may not even know that 'gay' is anything other than a reference to homosexuals, having little opportunity to have seen the word in its original context. But now? Oxford Dictionary has this: gay So it refers to (paraphrasing): Words morph and change over centuries. And that is what has happened to the word 'gay'. You're just old enough to recall when it didn't mean 'homosexual'. Oxford says that the word 'gay' started to be used to refer to homos as early as the Thirties and it finally became mainstream in the Sixties when Maybe you should pick another hill to die on. The word 'gay' just isn't worth fighting for now, if it ever was. That battle was lost 30-40 years ago and, with sodomy marriage now on the books, the war is over and we lost.
I may be that old,dunno for sure,but I am old enough to remember when they were called "Queer" amongst friends,and "homosexuals" in public by people wanting to be polite. Maybe you should pick another hill to die on. Why? Language and definitions aren't worth fighting for? What do you think about America being described in the press and even in schools as a "Democracy"? Is that ok with you? Or using the term "liberals" for neo-Soviets who are amongst the LEAST liberal people in all of history? When we allow the left to get away with calling themselves "liberals" it promotes them as having desirable traits to the unwashed young that don't know any better,and these days,the unwashed old that never learned any better. The 'murikan "liberal" politician of today is about a liberal as members of the Soviet Politburo of Stalin's time. We need to call them on that at every opportunity,not meekly surrender without a fight. When we do that,all we are doing is helping them recruit empty young minds.
America is governed and legislated as a republic of states. Their leaders are elected democratically. It's important to emphasize both, not one at the expense of the other. We're a democratic republic.
Which is one way of saying "Ware are a Republic."
We are governed as a republic by leaders selected via democracy. Both are vital to any understanding of America.
Both are vital to any understanding of America. Wrong. The Founding Fathers went to great pains to make sure we were a Republic,not a democracy. They even demanded voters be property owners because they were the only ones that paid taxes and had a vested interest in the survival of the nation.
You're wrong but I really don't care if you are.
Pete isn't completely wrong. Neither are you.
No, I'm simply right. We govern ourselves as a republic. But we transfer power from leaders and officials democratically. Change either of those and it is not an American system.
#26. To: Tooconservative, A K A Stone (#25)
(Edited)
Yes,but ONLY because the communists infiltrated our political system starting in the 20's,and had laws passed giving everyone the right to vote. Our system was set up so that ONLY land owners,who were the only ones who paid taxes at the time,were allowed to vote,and even they had to prove they were literate because the common opinion was that anyone that couldn't read and write was too ignorant to be able to cast an informed vote,and rightly so!
When you said Pete was wrong. This was included in his statement he made. What here is true.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#4. To: redleghunter (#2)
Well I was indifferent on Mooch until you posted the pics of those girly faggity sun glasses he wears. Knew he had to go then. And General Officers hate designer sun glasses. So that did Mooch in too.
#10. To: Tooconservative (#4)
Blowing kisses from the podium to the White House press corps was pretty gay too.
#11. To: sneakypete (#10)
#12. To: Tooconservative (#11)
I think it's 20-30 years too late to keep them from hijacking 'gay' to mean 'sodomy'.
#13. To: sneakypete (#12)
#14. To: Tooconservative (#13)
(Edited)
So when you go into town and someone says, "Hey, how are you today?" you'll just answer, "I'm feeling very gay.".
#15. To: sneakypete (#14)
No,but only because it is a work I have never used in normal conversation. I have always said "happy",instead.
Nobody has EVER won a fight,an argument,or even a discussion after allowing your opponent to control the language and the definitions.
#16. To: Tooconservative (#15)
So you admit that the sodomites never hijacked the word 'gay' from you to begin with.
#17. To: sneakypete (#16)
We now have at least one generation grown to become adults who have never once associated the word "gay" with it's true meaning. To them it means "homosexual",and the subconscious message they get is that "homosexuals are happy,so if you want to be happy you should try homosexuality."
I had forgotten the even older use of the word 'gay' to mean brightly colored but I had encountered it before in some old book. gay liberation started after the Stonewall riots. More often, you see references in the Forties and Fifties and even Sixties to "bachelors", "lifelong bachelors", "confirmed bachelors" as a sort of euphemism for homosexual. For that matter, the word 'homosexual' didn't become widespread until after the Kinsey surveys when it became all the rage to see your Freudian analyst and speculate on which of your male friends was a "latent homosexual". I bet you're old enough to recall that phrase being used even if Freud is not talked about much any more.
#18. To: Tooconservative (#17)
I bet you're old enough to recall that phrase being used even if Freud is not talked about much any more.
#19. To: sneakypete (#18)
What do you think about America being described in the press and even in schools as a "Democracy"? Is that ok with you?
#20. To: Tooconservative (#19)
We're a democratic republic.
#21. To: sneakypete (#20)
Which is one way of saying "We are a Republic."
#22. To: Tooconservative (#21)
We are governed as a republic by leaders selected via democracy.
#23. To: sneakypete (#22)
#24. To: Tooconservative (#23)
#25. To: A K A Stone (#24)
Replies to Comment # 25. But we transfer power from leaders and officials democratically.
#28. To: Tooconservative (#25)
They even demanded voters be property owners
End Trace Mode for Comment # 25.
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]