Richard Warnica published a confession in the Post this morning, subtitled “We’re still trying to figure out how Donald Trump won.”
These are the confessions of an honest man. I could have published the same about my reaction to Obama beating Romney; I was stupefied that the US public fell for that communoid flake, that sly, anti-white, feckless pseud. Consequently, I make no claims of moral superiority or political perspicacity. But I do claim that I got Trump right, and bet $100 on Trump winning in December 2015.
On the basis of that slight authority, I analyzed Warnica’s article. It is broken into fivethematic sections:
- I was ideologically blind/I missed the importance of Steven Bannon
- Facebook allowed the fringe to become the mainstsream
- Trump reaped the “unfettered cash” released by the Citizen’s United decision of the Supreme Court.
- The timely intervention of James Comey into Hillary Clinton’s emails
- I was ideologically blind/ I dismissed the enthusiasm of the enormous crowds
Judging by what Mr. Warnica writes, he is till ideologically blind. He is not alone. So are most of the people I hear on the subject of Trump.
- Let us start with his description of Steve Bannon.
“He trafficked, and still does traffic, in views about Islam and race and other issues that would have been disqualifying for a major political figure in an earlier era. His political ideas were drawn from such oddball sources as online gaming and apocalyptic clash-of-civilizations philosophy.”
The primary political division in western civilization at the moment is whether people are aware that Islam is not the friend of liberal civilization. I find that secular humanists (atheists) are particularly blind on this subject. Seeing that all metaphysical beliefs are ipso facto in error, indeed delusional, apparently it makes no difference to them that some religions are conducive to rational inquiry and others not, that some favour the equality of the sexes, and others do not, and that some believe that all questions have been answered in one exclusive truth and others think the paths to redemption are many.
Ordinary people are crying out for a major politician to link Islamic jihad with Islam. Please could someone make a connection between Karl Marx and Lenin? Between what the Koran says and what believers int he Koran feel justified to do? Thus, if Richard Warnica still thinks that the impeccably liberal Samuel Huntingdon’s “Clash of Civilizations” is beyond the pale, he remains stuck in ignorance and denial. The borders of Islam in every direction are bloody. It is a world conquering faith of enforced submission and slavery. Whether it might be different in six centuries is a problem for the future. At the moment it is the principal enemy of liberal civilization. People want to hear someone in power who is at least cognizant of the problem.
2. “Facebook allowed the fringe to become mainstream”.
This assumes what needs to be demonstrated. Who is the fringe, and who the mainstream? In short, who is defining reality here anyway? The Internet has allowed people to gather, disseminate, and read information outside of the filters of the MSM.
3. Trump reaped the “unfettered cash” released by the Citizen’s United decision of the Supreme Court.
Any mention of Trump raising unlimited cash relative to the Clinton money machine is ludicrous. We need not discuss this further.
4. The timely intervention of James Comey into Hillary Clinton’s emails
I have not been running US foreign policy out of my home computer either, but it is likely that many people had their views of Hillary solidified by this event.
5. I was ideologically blind/ I dismissed the enthusiasm of the enormous crowds
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle. One thing that helps toward it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one’s opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it. Political predictions are usually wrong. But even when one makes a correct one, to discover why one was right can be very illuminating. In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with reality. If one recognizes this, one cannot, of course, get rid of one’s subjective feelings, but one can to some extent insulate them from one’s thinking and make predictions cold-bloodedly, by the book of arithmetic. In private life most people are fairly realistic. When one is making out one’s weekly budget, two and two invariably make four. Politics, on the other hand, is a sort of sub-atomic or non-Euclidean word where it is quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously. Hence the contradictions and absurdities I have chronicled above, all finally traceable to a secret belief that one’s political opinions, unlike the weekly budget, will not have to be tested against solid reality.”
I suggest a course in humility for Richard Warnica of the kind George Orwell proposed. I have had to take it a few times myself.