Steve Sailer writes: Donald Trump has come to be seen by both his enemies and his supporters as the living embodiment of a potential revival of the American tradition of free speech after the Obama ice age of political correctness. Trump’s backers tend to believe they have more to gain from frank, outspoken debate (whether in pragmatic advantages or simply in entertainment value), while his opponents assume that they, personally, have more to lose from a return to a freer market for ideas.
This is one of those rare cases in politics where both sides may be right.
For example, back in March, Senator Marco Rubio warned, shortly before losing the Florida primary and dropping out of the race, that this new craze for honesty had America careening toward chaos and anarchy (not to mention poorer career prospects for establishment Republicans):
“This is what a culture and a society looks like when everybody says whatever the heck they want, when everyone just goes around saying ‘I’m just going to speak my mind,’” Rubio said at a morning press conference in Largo, Fla. “Well, there are other people that are angry, too. And if they speak out and say whatever they want, it all breaks down. It’s called chaos. It’s called anarchy. And that’s what we’re careening towards.”
Rubio had prospered under the old rules of the game that had limited the topics for Republican rhetoric to questions of who liked the corporate income tax least and loved Israel most. But in the unexpected new Trump Era when Republican voters were suddenly allowed to offer their opinions on more fundamental topics such as who should be allowed into America, Rubio withered.
Of course, Rubio didn’t stumble quite as humiliatingly as onetime front-runner Jeb Bush, whose central theme—that he loved Mexicans more than he liked Americans—had been considered electoral genius by the GOP brain trust in 2012–15. Before Trump reminded voters that your candidate really ought to at least claim to be on your side, it was thought clever for Republican candidates to offer American voters an attitude of disdain and a platform of dispossession.
One odd thing about all this is that Trump, who prides himself on his salesmanship, had never seemed during his long celebrity career to be a likely candidate for the role of leader of the awkward squad of tellers of inconvenient truths. Even more than most salesmen, Trump has been famous over the last three decades for using generous helpings of what he calls “truthful hyperbole” to promote his offerings as the greatest things ever. (On the other hand, in contrast to the rather abstract business life of Mitt Romney, Trump’s career of building giant buildings that rappers and pro athletes want to live in is the kind of tangible accomplishment that citizens can identify with.)
Trump’s evident love of making money meant that he wasn’t seen as a threat to the established order, because our system is practiced at controlling dissent through economic squeezing.
The key month in the emergence of the Legend of Trump, however, came immediately following his June 16, 2015, announcement of his candidacy, when business behemoths like NBC, Macy’s, Univision, Carlos Slim, and the golf tours of America and Britain all threatened to break their corporate relationships with Trump for pointing out that Mexican elites are dumping their unwanted population on America.
Normally Americans meekly back down with apologies when confronted with that kind of corporate firepower. But Trump responded that he had 10 billion dollars so he could afford to tell the truth. Granted, Trump probably doesn’t have close to 10 billion dollars, but that only made his political audacity seem even more heroic. Read on.
* People like Anglin and other men with extravagant haircuts (what?) don’t really believe Trum is a fascist.
They have learned from 100 years of liberalism. They realized that the only thing required a of a political movement in the age of mass media is to be known. As long as you manage to grab attention with an air of having fun and I-don’t-give-a-fuck, you’ll do well. Being serious and thoughtful is for later. Remind you of anything?
They also photoshopped Hitler quotes onto Taylor Swift pictures until the terse letters from her lawyers.
* I’ve finally gotten around to watching The Sopranos, and Trump strikes me as likeable for many of the same reasons the TV audience finds the Tony Soprano character likable.
Gets things done.
A natural leader–assumes dominance.
Says what he thinks without fear or favor.
Treats his opponents harshly, as they (usually) deserve.
Deals with the world as it is rather than with wishful thinking.
Has an intuitive understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of others.
Anti-intellectual, cuts through intellectual bullshit and gets at the essential truth.
* Hillary? Jokes? She can only be found on the pointy end of that spear.
Let’s pull one of her previous exertions at humor out of the memory hole — the barking incident.
The thing that got me about Hillary’s canine performance is that it just couldn’t have been spontaneous — it was obviously designed as part of a joke. Her communication team must have thought it was a fine idea to have her do this thing.
Can you imagine the brainstorming that must have gone into this?
Communication Guru 1: The problem we keep running into in the focus groups is that your delivery seems too canned, Hillary.
Hillary: Canned? Canned? They just don’t know me! Everybody who knows me knows how warm and spontaneous I am! They love me to pieces for my warmth and spontaneity! Sometimes they get so overwhelmed with it they have to leave the room!
Comm Guru 2: We just have to figure out a way to let the public see what all your friends already know.
Hillary: Everybody loves my dog imitation! They can’t believe it when I do my dog imitation! You’ve all seen my dog imitation, haven’t you?
Comm Guru 1: Oh Yes of course.
Comm Guru 2: Many times. Can’t count how many. Not enough fingers and toes.
Hillary: So let’s figure out how to work it in.
Comms Gurus 1 and 2, in unison: Great idea, Hillary!
Comm Guru 1: How about making fun of the Republicans? They’re like silly demented dogs, right?
Hillary: That’s fabulous!
Comm Guru 2: Yes, Hillary, what you could do to set it up is to talk about how everytime a Republican lies, a dog barks. And then you do your silly demented dog bark.
Hillary: And that is fabulous! Perfect! This thing is on!
Comm Guru 1: It’s so inspirational to be working with you, Hillary!
Comm Guru 2:Yeah, I think I speak for both of us when I say it almost feels wrong to charge for our services!
Hillary: Almost, but not totally, am I right?
Comm Gurus 1 and 2: Oh, you’re right again, Hillary!
All: Ha,ha,ha!
Hillary: People aren’t going to stop talking about this one, I can feel it!
Comm Guru 1: It’ll never go away, I guarantee it.
Comm Guru 2: Youtube is forever.
Hillary: What I wouldn’t give to see the look on Trump’s face when he first hears it! [Hillary starts barking, doesn’t stop].
* And my belief that Trump is going to steamroll Hillary is due not to specific attacks. It is due to the Sailer strategy being valid, and Trump being far better at winning, executing and strategizing than Hillary has proven to be. Hillary is plenty smart, but so is Trump and likely more so. And what Trump has is killer instinct, competitiveness, and ability in that area. This is something common to all elite businessmen – their idea of the perfect business situation is one where they have no competition, and if that is not the lay of the land, they do their best to make it that way.
Someone like Trump is very well practiced at sizing up strengths and weaknesses of opponents, he will know his own, and he will have analyzed it before even entering the race. He will pit his strengths against her weaknesses, and do his best to make her play his game. His feeling for what people will buy, what they believe, what they think – it’s far more valuable than her knowledge of arbitrary laws and how to get your way in a courtroom. Her Secretary of Statesmanship was her opportunity to show what a diplomatic deep state genius she was. And… nothing. She’s no Bill, she doesn’t have the feel, the instinct; her hamfisted campaign attempts have been exactly that. Nothing grabs. She’s struggling to beat a geriatric communist.
One thing I’ve been pretty good at, is kind of the opposite to Steve. Things I like become popular. I early adopt some things years before they go mainstream. In the case of HBD, more than anything else I’ve been a fan of, however the full weight of the media, education system and a lot of the government has been against us. We’re going mainstream, and Trump is our avatar. The riot in the ballot booth is about to begin, and not before time.
* The Times article is well worth reading in entirety. Steve focuses on immigration, but there’s more to the “psychological reactance” (a theory that apparently has been around since 1966) driving Trump’s appeal:
Jonathan Haidt, a professor at N.Y.U., suggested to me that one way to better understand the intensity of Trump’s appeal is by looking at something called “psychological reactance.” Haidt describes reactance as
“the feeling you get when people try to stop you from doing something you’ve been doing, and you perceive that they have no right or justification for stopping you. So you redouble your efforts and do it even more, just to show that you don’t accept their domination. Men in particular are concerned to show that they do not accept domination.”
Haidt applies this to the 2016 election:
“Translated to the Trump phenomenon, I would say that decades of political correctness, with its focus on “straight white men” as the villains and oppressors — now extended to “straight white cis-gendered men” — has caused some degree of reactance in many and perhaps most white men.”
In both the workplace and academia, Haidt argues,
“the accusatory and vindictive approach of many social justice activists and diversity trainers may actually have increased the desire and willingness of some white men to say and do un-PC things.”
There you go. That’s it, in a nutshell. The parts in bold – my emphasis – sum up what I hear from a lot of men I know who are surprise Trump supporters. As Paddy Chayefsky put it, they’re mad as hell, and they’re not going to take this anymore. It’s not just immigration, not just BLM or silly arguments over transgender bathroom rights. It’s the demonization of them, of us, which recently has become openly celebrated in mainstream media. Just as important, it’s the sense that one can’t fight back or even argue gently, mildly and reasonably against any of the PC dogma without risking ostracization and professional and sometimes personal ruin.
The level of fury with this hatred for whites, males and heterosexuals and this enforced orthodoxy of thought has been steadily building for years. It has found a voice in Trump, for all his many faults.
That’s why he’s Teflon Trump – it almost literally doesn’t matter what he says. He’s fighting back. And it just feels so damn good to have someone on the public stage sticking a thumb in the eye of the forces of PC that he gets tremendous support regardless of what he actually stands for.
The fact that things have come to this, that so many white men feel almost compelled to support this otherwise awful man for President, is another reason to be furious. We’ve not only been demonized and silenced, now we’re pushed to support someone for President who is poorly suited to the office but who at least speaks up for us.
* They’ve spent decades trying to make Crooked Hillary look human/warm/empathetic, only to have it fall flat and fake each time. Any comedian will tell you it’s the delivery, not the material, that sells the joke. It’s also why Chris Rock’s material wouldn’t work for Jerry Seinfeld and vice-versa; their deliveries work for their stuff, not for anyone else’s (it’s also why comedians will sometimes tell stories about “giving” a joke to another comedian because it doesn’t “work” for them).
That isn’t to say that material isn’t important – it is- but if you can’t deliver a joke the material doesn’t matter.
Hillary always tries the fake humorous routine or the fake warmth routine, and it falls flatter and flatter each time. She should really just play up her dour, humorless, but serious nature – similar to Margaret Thatcher (whom Hillary is too proud and ignorant to emulate). That way, a dry riposte from Hillary would carry far more humor, because you wouldn’t see it coming. But she’s dumb, so she’ll do the fake-cackling nonsense and the fake-loving-grandma routine and no one will buy it.
That said, the comedians have been out in force attacking Trump since last summer, and it just makes him stronger. Why? Simple: every joke in the world that could be made to denigrate Trump has already been made. They aren’t fresh. So anything Hillary delivers will seem stale from the get go. That’s dangerous.
Trump also took full-frontal comedy blows already at a professional roast by Comedy Central. Way back in 2011: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1865333/. Nothing Hillary can throw at him will in anyway be as cutting or memorable as when he sat there and let professional comedy writers and comedians have a field day on him on cable TV.* Hillary will come off as a summer repeat with her jokes.
Trump, meanwhile, has the gift of freshness and great delivery. “Crooked” Hillary was fresh – as Scott Adams called it, a linguistic killshot – but Trump has the gift of great comedic delivery. That’s killer. If Ted Cruz or Rubio had called her “Crooked Hilary” or Goofy Elizabeth or Crazy Bernie, it would have sounded stilted, forced, and fake. Trump comes off humorous, and the jokes fit his delivery. He has a great stage presence.
If I were Hillary, I would avoid making jokes about Trump, because it plays into Trump’s strengths and not hers. It’d be Dukakis in the tank all over again, or Kerry on the windboard – don’t play up an image that isn’t you. That said, she seems a bad enough campaigner to fall for some Hollywood consultant’s argument that they just need to make fun of Trump more this summer, and she can use the same comedy writers that Jimmy Kimmel have – after all, he’s funny, so it must be all his material, right? **
*again, the fact that Trump did this roast in 2011 me he was thinking about seriously running for a long time and planned it out. He opened himself up for the roast specifically to gauge where the likely attacks would come from and what they would say, and to get it all out of the way. Remember: he registered “Make America Great Again” as a trademark way back in 2012. He’s playing 4th-level chess while everyone else thinks he’s too dumb to know how to open the box.
**p.s. Jimmy Kimmel isn’t funny, just putting this in context.
