* Breaking through as an immigration restrictionist is difficult art that requires a delicate balance – if you’re too racialist like the BNP the elites and media will crush you, if you’re too socialist like Marine Le Pen and you will do quite well but will struggle to pull in the middle classes, if you’re economically right-wing like Pauline Hanson and you will scare off low-income whites, and if you’re too socially conservative like Buchanan and you will get bogged down in the culture wars.
So far Trump managed to battle through without alienating any of the key groups that an immigration restrictionist needs to win over to get into power.
* Every time I have to press “1″ for English, I agree with this, and apparently so have many millions of people.
* Trump is a master troll. Even going back to his meatspace sock puppetry, he has enjoyed trolling people for fun and profit. When the media clutches pearls, he doubles down and trolls some more. Examples are too many to list, but perhaps the most epic was the taco bowl tweet:
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/728297587418247168 He triggers. They gasp. He loves hispanics! But… he wants to build a wall! They hate him! But… they have nothing. Simultaneously, he hawks his own product. Genius! And… it’s simultaneously an unconfirmed dig at Jeb! And he just sits there with that shit eating troll-face grin. Double genius! You can tell the women out there who buy into the PC orthodoxy are thinking, “You can’t say that!”. Then they laugh. Then they get a little tingly, because they know they are dealing with an alpha. Humor is one of the best methods to deconstruct. It has been (((used))) to break down basically everything about our society, and now Trump is using it like a wrecking ball to destroy the prevailing orthodoxy.* There’s a radio talk show host in SF, Ronn Owens, been there for 40 years. He mentioned how when he interviews a liberal politician, the lib will list all the do gooder laws and positions he supports, but never be able to speak about actually meeting and working with the people in these programs. Like Sanders.
The conservatives, will be able to go on at length about actually getting in the trenches trying to find out what works and what doesn’t….
* Too soon to declare victory. If Trump loses in November then it will all be for naught. Even if he wins, he has to get his proposals thru Congress. He’s done the impossible so far and threaded the needle with Republican primary voters (if not the pundit class who have declared him Hitler anyway), but it’s an all or nothing contest so unless he crosses the finish line first, it means nothing.
* The late Lee Atwater, a tough and effective campaign manager for Bush 41 against Dukakis, believed a candidate has to focus on at most 2 or 3 issues. He showed Dukakis weak on patriotism, playing up his crusade to eliminate loyalty oaths in Massachusetts, weak on defense (this caused Dukakis to take the famous tank ride), and weak on crime (Dukakis program of prison furloughs for violent felons was played up in the Willie Horton story).
Trump has a similar short list of issues, not a long portfolio that panders to dozens of interest groups.
* I’m amazed at how much importance the pundits attach to “policy.” Hey, Mr. Nixon, America needs to know exactly how you are going to handle the Quemoy and Matsu crisis?
I recall some of Obama’s policies. He was the candidate who opposed gay marriage and whose healthcare plan wasn’t going to be mandatory, in contrast to Hillary’s.
* I was recently reading about the origins of the Sri Lankan civil war. For the most part, it was unreadable despite being filled with epic violence. Too many unpronounceable names and I couldn’t remember which one was on what side – worse than a Russian novel. But one thing caught my eye – the war actually started over affirmative action for college admissions that was being imposed by the socialist government. When you meddle in this kind of stuff, you are playing with fire. This point seems to be completely lost on American “democratic socialists” like Hillary and Bernie (Hillary is one too, she just hides it better than Bernie). They think that they can boil the frog gradually, but it doesn’t always work. If you turn up the flame a little too quickly, the frog may notice before it is boiled to death.
* As Trump himself said: the big breakthrough for him was the TV show. It acted as a giant supply of rocket fuel for every single other activity in his life.
Also this breakthrough made his rivals go crazy. Especially the Jewish ones. And the quasi-Jews like Geraldo.
Just wait until Trump’s Wash DC Old Post Office development opens with gorgeous Ivanka cutting the ribbon and then shortly thereafter he’s in the Oval Office and business is BOOMING. Those rooms are going to be sold out for the foreseeable future.
* I think his general election pivot in the last few weeks has been masterful. I’m not sure how much of this is due to Mannafort or just Trump’s instincts. One example, which is often overlooked, is his deliberate unwillingness to comment on the transgender bathroom issue. Looking at the polls in NC, they clearly show the public is divided almost evenly on HB2 so he wisely chose to take a relatively neutral stance on the issue. Now, the Obama administration looks like a bunch of crazed cultural Marxists who want to erase the concept of gender while Trump is reaping the benefits of the backlash to this without having boxed himself in as a social con obsessed with the culture war.
It’s really impressive.
I know that a lot of the folks on the right like Douthat, etc, argue that it’s all a “con” and he doesn’t mean anything he promises to anybody. But most of us would rather he win the general election than stand on principle between now and November. He’s already locked in the social cons and immigration restrictionists. It would be suicidal to keep pandering to them and alienate the undecided.
* Trump’s reversals, as they are perceived and pointed out by the commentariat, seem to me mostly to be the product of his tendency to speak off the cuff, often “thinking out loud.” The position papers on his campaign website haven’t changed, but no one pays attention to them – just to the latest sound bite on TV.
Professional politicians don’t do what Trump does. They, too, have their position papers, but they also have memorized talking points, carefully phrased and focus-group tested, which they recite almost as mechanically as a recorded telephone menu. American politicians generally aren’t good impromptu speakers, and when confronted by some unexpected twist in the discussion, they often can do nothing but repeat themselves (as Marco Rubio did in one of the debates).
Trump’s lack of message discipline drives the pundits to distraction, because they are unaccustomed to it. They marvel at how Trump’s supporters stick with him despite his apparent reversals, and suppose it must be because they are uncritical and stupid. Actually it may be that they are refreshed to hear, for once, a candidate who speaks impromptu in language resembling 21st-century conversational demotic American rather than Beltway speechwriterese.
Whether their judgment about him be right or wrong, Trump has won their trust on the big issues of immigration, trade, and generally managing the United States in the interests of American citizens rather than foreigners. They know that the media have the habit of tearing whatever he might say from its context in order to present it as unflatteringly as possible, and are prepared to cut him some slack on the alleged or apparent inconsistency between a snippet of what he said this week and an extract of what he said a month ago.
* The NYT women Trump hit piece was written by a woman & a homosexual. That’s all you need to know about its potential to resonate with the masses.
Camille Paglia made this observation and scoffed at the supposedly devastating hit piece. CNN ran a segment this morning purporting to show Trump flip flopping on guns during a Larry King show 17 years ago. All he said is that he’d prefer there were no guns but bad people have them so citizens should have them too. This evidently was anti-gun.
* Yeah, the reaction to that tweet was nuts. Young Andrew Kaczinsky at Buzzfeed tweeted his scoop that the taco bowls weren’t actually at the Trump Tower Grill but at the Trump Tower Cafe (like it matters at all).
* Trump had game before the concept of a PUA existed. And this is true of anyone who has been able to consistently attract attractive women say, in the 1980s or earlier – they figured this stuff out themselves. So-called game gurus did not invent anything, they discovered it, or rediscovered it and gave it a name that has stuck. E.g. Women have shit tested from time immemorial, it’s just that this now has a name.
Alpha is what alpha does, and Trump attracts 10s like bees to honey. Go back and look at the women he has either married or banged over the last 30 years. Are any of them even plain to the extent of being 7s or 8s? And when they come up to him, he acts naturally and doesn’t freeze up like a lot of us would. He hasn’t exhibited any sort of crisis of confidence in this election process like a Perot, and won’t either because that’s not who he is. He passes shit test after shit test. Dude is alpha as f***.
And I use alpha to mean whoever the guy is who attracts attractive women. Whoever does this is alpha, and the more they can do this, the more alpha they are. Many alphas are happily married, having attracted their attractive mate. If we rate men on a 1-10 scale of attractiveness (taking into account money, humor, intellect, height, attitude, athleticism, looks, not in that order – the things that women are drawn to), realize that the bottom percentiles only date their hand and never marry. Most of the above average guys will be married by their thirties and almost certainly by their forties.
I am less Whiskey in making this a binary thing. As for the beta concept, it is less interesting to me. In any group of males, a leader will emerge through the pecking order process, something common with lots of mammalian males, and even chickens. It makes sense, because biology can’t prescribe who will be a leader because it doesn’t know who will be in a given group, but it can prescribe a competition to be leader and the winner of that competition in any group will be leader. A small group will have a sergeant, a large group will have a general. (Yes, I know that military leadership is selected, but leaders do emerge within the structure, whether in officers or enlisted men, and whoever has rank in whatever group it is will be the leader.)
So in that context, someone who is only capable of leading a small group will defer to another more capable leader, generally, or will not be recognized as such by the larger group. In terms of alpha, this makes them less alpha, but not necessarily a beta. I guess I find the beta concept less interesting, because I see how the human interactions actually work. Put a group of stupid losers together, and a leader will still emerge. Put a group of what Whiskey would term betas together, and a leader will emerge from these so-called betas. Men naturally form heirarchies, and do so well. Always women in groups will complain about office politics and act cattily towards each other. Men will generally fall into line. We need to do so, to work together in armies and in civilian life.
Women are attracted to leaders, period. In larger groups, the upper echelon are also attractive to them. In terms of attracting women, there is significant overlap between the leadership alpha continuum and the studliness alpha continuum. However, the studliness alpha continuum leans more towards looks, height, money, humor, not necessarily in that order. However, alpha leaders by definition have confidence, intelligence, carriage, persuasiveness… and often also have height, money, humor, athleticism, even looks. So considerable overlap. And studying either form of alphaship will have spillover effects into the other form.
Some of this stuff is illustrated in Trump vs Jeb. Jeb is a lesser leadership alpha (still a governer, but would be a nobody without the Bush name, networks and money), and in terms of studliness alpha, a non-entity. Jeb is strangely like William Hurt, a character actor in a leading man’s body.
Anyway, Trump is now beating Hillary in the polls. He has less of a problem with women (married or otherwise) than Hillary has with men. And he only has a problem with women in my view to the extent that the media makes it a problem. In actual fact, it is Hillary and Bill who are really anti-women, and they are really unwise to the extent that they make this an issue – they are leading with their chin.
* Silver is very methodical about figuring the odds under the assumption of no paradigm shift. The 2012 general election played out very much like the 2000, 2004, and 2008 elections, so he did an excellent job of forecasting state by state results. The 2016 primary election on the GOP side was a repudiation of the of the reigning system, so the recent rules stopped working.
* I don’t think Trump will sell out on Immigration. What’s his upside and downside? His upside is that he gets a few nice articles for a week in the NYT, and Paul Ryan says something nice about him for five minutes. The downside is that he loses his entire base of support and faces at worst Dem led impeachment threats with … what the might forces of the GOPe for cover?
For better or worse, Nate Silver completely missed the central issue of immigration — it destroys Social Security and Medicare. The foundation of the American welfare state that almost EVERY working American depends on. Trump alone has understood this and made this argument — take in the Third World, lose Social Security and Medicare. Deport illegals, more money for Medicare and Social Security.
As Steve points out, every Casino Indian tribe kicks out as many members as possible. Trump is simply that dynamic writ in the US.
As for professional women, well of course they hate hate hate Trump. They always would. The REASON the GOPe is what it is, is professional White women. They all hate hate hate their beta male husbands, mostly surfed on Affirmative Action and eat up diversity because they are junior members, have limited if non existent skills compared to White men and hate hate hate White men in general for that reason (the way Blacks hate hate hate Jews for higher IQ/skills), and support Open Borders, anti-White preferences, gay everything, etc.
Matriarchies are always depraved and debauched, and favor outsider men against their own. Romney (who gave up his Third Party Run effort), the rest of the GOPe are what they are because of their personal circumstances. They have spent their entire lives placating angry, hateful wives who feel they could have done better, in some cases (Mitch Daniels) actively cheating/abandoning. Trump is the opposite — women have to keep HIM happy, as he has and will trade up to a newer, younger, hotter, model.
We will see how a scorched earth campaign goes. Trump is not a placating Mitch Daniels desperate to win back his cheating wife. He’s already unleashed the rape charge on Bill Clinton, with Hillary as the Camile Cosby enabler of the attacks on the victims character. Hillary is a walking indictment of the Democratic Party, as this was the best they could do: an angry, entitled woman widely perceived as lesbian and man-hating who went all in for identity politics.
And critically, offers no goodies. No free stuff. Just more anti-White guy stuff (which again, professional White women eat up — they all figure they’re super geniuses and should be running everything save that icky White guy who once awkwardly asked them for coffee in an elevator).
Trump is running on saving Social Security and Medicare by kicking illegals out and stopping them from coming in. Hillary is running on the opposite plus anti-White guy identity politics. We will see which is the most effective campaign.
* Anti-immigration was a $1,000 bill laying on the floor that every single other candidate veered away from and refused to pick up. If everyone else is too afraid of touching the issue, then picking up the issue as your central theme does come with risk because all of the signals in that political environment, the consensus opinion, is that this is a divisive issue which won’t lead the candidate to political success.
So what you dismiss so easily was actually a pretty bold gambit based either on Trump’s principles, or accurate insight into the mood of America or calculated opportunism. Same with his Muslim policy, which regularly polls at between 65% to 85% support, far above Trump’s support, and which every single other candidate condemned. They’re all completely willing to take a hand’s off approach to Muslim immigration and allow their population to keep growing in America despite the problems we see around the world in all societies as Muslim proportion of population grows.
* Sanders pushes for free college, but without any blacks in America, there wouldn’t have been a Civil Rights Act, Griggs vs. Duke Power wouldn’t have come up, disparate impact would be seen as a key plot point in a dystopian science fiction story, credentialism wouldn’t be a thing, and so there would not be a crisis of kids going into debt in order to qualify for a job at Starbucks.
* How would she campaign to win against Trump? I am kind of drawing a blank, because she has largely made her bed at this point. She has campaigned to the right of Bernie, so would struggle to go “old left” in order to win enough of the white male vote. And by enabling the immivasion, she divides up the bennies among too many people. This is not 2008. Hillary either goes full retard and loses; or unconvincingly, walks back her pro-immigration and anti-white male identity politics. And probably still loses.
* The whole “alpha” – “beta” thing as it’s used by the PUAs is misleading AFAIC. When I worked at a big ad agency, there was a low-ranking copywriter and a low-ranking art director, both of whom got some fabulous looking women. All the rest of us were impressed by that, of course, but neither was really respected as a man among men. They just had a weird talent. To me being an alpha is more about being able to dominate other men than being able to seduce women.
* There are relative “losers” who can pick up women. Often there is some ability that they have outside of work. Maybe they are funny, or good at conversation, or good at sport, or good looking, or good at music, or can build things (women like provider type guys) or several of those things. However, have you ever known a leader or high achiever, in some sort of local club, fraternity, elected office, business, law, art, music, whatever… who can’t score an above average looking woman or wife? Usually leadership alpha implies studliness alpha. (Kissinger was never in the running for People’s Sexiest Man Alive.) The converse is less true.
One thing to consider is that males often find it hard to judge attractiveness of other males. But if there was a guy with an attractive woman and who is not rolling in money who you were asking “What on earth does she see in him?”, often other women will rate him as attractive. Google “Sexiest Man Alive”. There is hardly a man’s man amongst them. Exceptions to the rule are Connery, maybe Channing Tatum, Mel Gibson, Denzel, and… Nick Nolte WTF?
