Trump Flips His Shit, Part Deux: The Reckoning

   I reckon he may be functionally equivalent to a crazy person is the thing. And the GOP is finally starting to realize that he may be even less reality-based than they are...
   I'm starting to feel rather more confident that Trumpo has irrevocably shot himself in his big red shoe. The contrast between Obama's calm, rational, eminently adult approach to the problem and Trump's barely rational series of puerile outbursts is almost surreal. If you juxtaposed two fictional political leaders like this in a movie, it would seem tedious and pedantic. It's very difficult to believe that any rational person can compare these men and side with Trump. But...a large minority do still seem to be doing so. And so about that rational bit...
   I've been very clear that I think Trump has been treated unfairly by the media. He's a stupid jackass of gingrichian proportions, of course...but even such a person can be treated unfairly. And I understand the urge to treat him thusly. It's an embarrassment to the nation that he'd even be considered as a distant possibility as a presidential candidate. But anyway: he's been treated unfairly in many ways. But suggesting that Obama is sympathetic to terrorists...that really ought to be the last of a long series of last straws. Aside from being insane, it's just a kind of intolerable affront to reason. Trump's simply not qualified to seriously comment on Obama's policies. Obama's playing chess on a global level and Trump's stomping his feet and insisting that it doesn't make sense how the horsey moves and only a terrorist would move it like that and if it were him he'd just make it swoop straight across the board and kill the radical Islamic king... Trump has long been an embarrassment to himself to the extent that anyone actually noticed him. Now he's an embarrassment to us all.
   I do think that that it's worth discussing the terminological issue that Trumpo and Fox "News" and those folks are all on about. What the hell is the magic phrase they want him to use? 'Radical Islam'? 'Islamic Extremism'? I can't remember and refuse to look it up. I mean...Obama already slapped them down hard in several different ways, e.g. by pointing out that we all know who we're fighting... But still, the truth is important, and there's something good in itself about calling a spade a spade. Obama and Clinton have been cheating a bit by pretending that the say-the-magic-words crowd are arguing that saying the magic words is sufficient for winning the conflict, when they're actually saying something closer to: it's necessary. (Which of course it isn't...but whatever.)
   I do think that a reasoable person might think that we ought to speak the clear truth about what's going on: it is, after all, Islamic terrorists that we're talking about here. You know it. I know it. Obama knows it. The Islamic terrorists know it. Everybody knows it. (With the possible exception of the PCs and the leftier fringes of liberalism...  It's never really clear exactly which fantasy world those people have convinced themselves they're inhabiting at the moment...but never mind that now.) Thing is, as should go without saying: the crazy right has been driven mad by ODS. The very fact that we all know who we're fighting means that there's not a pressing need to say it. And POTUS needs to not say it. We're in a hearts-and-minds battle. Much of what we say and do is aimed at convincing reasonable Muslims and those on the fence to side with us rather than ISIL. And, ultimately, at convincing global Islam to move in the direction of the liberal West. The goal is practical, not theoretical. No sensible person thinks that Obama is unclear about what's going on. He's eschewing a few phrases, while clearly expressing the relevant thoughts in slightly more circumspect ways. And he's doing it because the practical payoff could be great. The very fact that Trump seems to be utterly clueless about all this--that alone is decent evidence that they guy has no business thinking about the affairs of adults.
   Yes, it's weird that people keep insisting that Islam is tolerant, and only "a tiny fraction" of Muslim's aren't. And it's silly to claim that ISIL "isn't really Islamic"...unless you also want to try to argue that the Inquisition wasn't really Christian... Global polling data shows that a lot of bad attitudes are pretty common among Muslims.  And, yeah, when we non-POTUS folk are sitting around discussing the issue, it's important to be clear-eyed about that. But being the President means making occasional concessions to the practical. And that's basically the end of that story.