50 Shades of Trump

All orange!!!!

OK, that cliche is taken care of. On to the real topic.

Everyone is trying to sort out who Trump really is and what to do about him. I've read scads of interesting thoughts, and my browser tabs overfloweth. I must cram them all into one post, so here goes.

Theory 1. From Reason, a libertarian site, comes a rant about Trump being a demogogue and racist. Lots of good, pithy phrases here, such as "politics built on entirely on grievance," with no plan for governance.

Theory 2. From a left-leaning heavyweight thinker, a clear assessment of the biggest danger than Trump--his vindictiveness when he has the US Department of Justice under his control. Can Trump do this in the US of A where we have due process? Yes. He can make life miserable for the honest federal prosecutors, they quit, and he replaces them with his flunkies, who then sue or prosecute Trump's targets du jour. It's a nightmare. (If you're in a hurry when you read it, skip down to where he starts talking about the Department of Justice.)

Theory 3. Trump must lose and Trumpism must be defeated. This is from RedState. According to this author, Trump is a thoroughly awful person who lies, has no core principles, and is "capricious and dangerous." It's imperative to defeat him, but it has be done by someone who deserves the presidency and can lead the mistaken followers of Trump to a better path and a worthy path. Who can do that? Hahahaha, that's where the surprise is.

Theory 4. Also from RedState. The Supreme Court isn't enough of a reason to vote for Trump. Don't do it!!!!! Trump will cut deals with the Dems and true conservatism will be defeated again. No, conservatives must prevent Trump's nomination.

Theory 5. From Jonathan Chait, a riveting excoriation of Trump's lies and turn-abouts. Trump is so scary because he exempts himself from the norms of society when it comes to truth, his own past statements, and his vendettas against others.

Theory 6. This is not so much a theory as an interesting piece from HotAir. I visited the site to get their take on Trump. It wasn't particularly friendly. In this post, they fault Trump for his ego and compare it to Obama's ego.

Theory 7. Trump is a long-shot, but with this handy checklist, you can tell in advance if Trump will win. Written with a funny edge.

Theory 8. From the Daily Caller, Trump is "the cleansing forest fire... the great calamity we need" to clean the charlatans out of the conservative movement, including Trump himself. Still, the big question is; "Conservatives can decry the 'fascism' and 'demagoguery' of Trump all they want, but they need to understand why someone like that can run off with their party." Too bad the article doesn't even begin to answer that question.

Theory 9. I couldn't find much support for Trump in the mainstream conservative sites, so I ended up at this no-name site. Here, the theory is that Trump pushes back in just the way that the silent majority has prayed for. He's blunt, he tells it like it is, there are no boring policy papers that never pan out anyway, and he's a winner.

Theory 10. This one is very different. It looks at the polls of Trump versus Sanders, and notes that a poorly-known Democrat does pretty well against Trump. That doesn't bode well for Trump if he hopes to get Dems to cross over and vote for him. They don't seem overly disposed to do that.

Theory 11: Trump is less scary than another four years of Dems and their PC, agenda-controlling, intolerant white-male bashing.

Image: ratemyjob.com

Extras. I need a place to store this link. So here is Theory X: Trump is a conman and Trump University was one of his biggest cons. Still being litigated. Trump (as always) says the judge is unfair and also Mexican. The Trump "University" hard-sell playbook here.

Fact checking comparison

I read the following in a comment about requiring ID to vote:

"In fact the Republican chairs in both Pennsylvania and Florida ADMITTED that this was why they were doing it."

That shouldn't be hard to check. Fire up Google, search for "party chair admits reason for voter ID" and I get this:

Are there any conservative sites that covered this issue? Not in the first 100 hits. Let's try the conservative alternative to Google called yippy:

Zip on getting this information from the conservative search engine. One more try, this time I'll take the search directly to a conservative site, The Daily Caller:

What's funny is that there's video for both Pennsylvania and Florida party officials talking about this. My God, video.

God I love technology. Remember, whatever you try to hide, it isn't going to stay hidden.

Images: google.com, yippy.com, dailycaller.com

Tribalism as a reflex

I've been following the Trayvon Martin case since it went national. I don't see it as primarily a racial issue, though it definitely has racial tones in it, and I can easily see why blacks are roused to demonstrate. Anyone could be roused, but the case is going to have particular resonance for people who feel targeted for suspicion.

The Beginning

If I remember correctly, the national coverage started on Monday, March 19. By Friday, it was the biggest national story. Demonstrations had been organized. Al Sharpton was down in Florida. Obama, Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney all commented on the case. In general, they each said it was a tragedy that should be investigated thoroughly. For the life of me, I can't see anything wrong or offensive or even partisan in such a sentiment. It seems logical to me--someone dead by gunshot, therefore a need to investigate how and why and to determine if there was a crime.

Getting Nasty

How did we go from that logical sentiment to the conservative media circling the wagons? I can try to trace all the steps: Gingrich criticizing Obama for noting that Trayvon and he were could have been family (read: were the same race without saying 'race' or 'black'); the stupid hoodie comments by Geraldo Rivera. But then the reaction on the outer right seemed to go crazy. (Note: I'm not even going to touch the comments on various blogs because people are always trying to outdo one another in outrageous statements.)

Some conservative blogs, including some within the conservative mainstream, started trying to portray Trayvon as a thug, which is hard to do when he'd never been arrested. In lieu of an arrest record, they used his posed gangsta photos, his suspensions from school, and the braggadocio on his twitter account.

In the meantime, CNN was reporting all the developments regardless of whether they tended to support Zimmerman or the Martin family. They reported the statement from the unnamed neighbor who saw Trayvon over Zimmerman on the grass. They reported about the demonstrations, they displayed the video of Zimmerman in the police station and the picture of Trayvon with the gangsta-style gold tooth ornament. The only information they didn't pass on were the hacked emails (many of which weren't authentic) and the tweets.

It's not clear to me why part of the conservative media went so negative on Trayvon Martin. It was known that he was unarmed, so why is it important to show Trayvon was a thug?

When You Don't Know Why

I don't have a logical answer to this, so I have to reach for an emotional reason. This story got a lot of traction, and it fits many points that Democrats/liberals/progressives make: there is racial profiling that hurts blacks, even resulting in death; police don't fully investigate the deaths of young black males; black males are presumed to be guilty of something; assailants, even when known, can get away scot-free with killing a young black male. A new concern is that Florida's Stand-Your-Ground law will result in even more deaths of young blacks that aren't investigated or prosecuted.

The story works so well for Democratic/liberal/progressive narrative that conservatives are left grasping at anything they can to lessen the impact of the story. Not all conservatives have felt this need. Many are treating this as largely a legal and police procedural matter where the state investigators and the courts will have to determine if Zimmerman was justified or not. These sane conservatives haven't felt the need to defeat the story.

The others, however, tried to shred the story, criticizing the media (of course, a favorite target), black spokesmen, Obama, Hispanic organizations (for not tribally supporting Zimmerman), the special investigator, and most cravenly, the dead boy.

Why is it so important to defeat the story rather than letting it play out? Is all news a zero-sum game, where the points your opponents can make should be blocked whenever possible, no matter how?

For some partisans, this is undoubtedly true. But why can't some, who have more responsibility because of their roles on news sites, let go of the competition and let the Democrats win those points? Instead, in their unwavering, single-minded tribalism, they try to smear whomever they can, and just end looking like the foul sewer floaters that they have become.

Battle lines

 Photo credit: cleftintherock.org

Extras.

• Measured response by HotAir, Morning Joe, Allen West.
• Examples of needless attacks: at Karen Finney, Daily Caller, more Daily Caller, wagist, Nice Deb, National Review, and Christian News.
• Perhaps the first national reporting of the incident and its significance.
• Critique of local coverage.
• Detailed CNN coverage.
• Minute-by-minute timeline, with contradictions and uncertainties.
• Detailed account of Trayvon's family's actions in the first two weeks afterward. 

Disclosure: I lived in New York at the time of the Tawana Brawley case. I haven't forgiven Sharpton, and there is no way I can be fair or neutral about him.

Updates. There are too many to mention. Click on the label "Trayvon Martin" to see more.