Sunday, August 20, 2017

Mnuchin's Statement On C'ville / Response To Requests To Resign In Protest: A Case Study In The Prevailing Madness

Link  to Mnuchin's statement.
Politico story.
Open letter to Mnuchin from Yale classmates.
Excerpt of interest to me:
We [ask you to resign] because President Trump has declared himself a sympathizer with groups whose values are antithetical to those values we consider fundamental to our sacred honor as Americans, as men and women of Yale, and as decent human beings. President Trump made those declarations loudly, clearly, and unequivocally, and he said them as you stood next to him.
This is false, and it illustrates what I've been trying to say about Trump's press conference and the response thereto: you can draw all sorts of bad conclusions about Trump, and I'll be right there with you. But a certain proposition has taken hold on the left and in the media (and to some extent even on the right, it seems)--that he "loudly, clearly, and unequivocally" said that he supports or sympathizes with white supremacists.
   And that just isn't true.
   It's falsified by observation of the press conference video and inspection of the transcripts.
   Perhaps you think that he was expressing those ideas though he didn't actually say them. Perhaps you think that what he said reveals his actual beliefs, and those beliefs make him a white supremacist. I've already admitted that I'm not great at figuring such things out, and should probably leave such tasks to others. But as for the assertion that it's what he actually, explicitly, clearly said: it is not.
   Here's another general idea that's animating my disagreement with the prevailing theory (or "narrative"--ugh): if Trump is so obviously terrible, then you shouldn't have to make shit up about him. You shouldn't even have to spin and stretch and exaggerate. The worse he is, the less you should have to fudge things.
   But the left (which includes much of the "MSM," I'd say) is, IMO, in the grip of Trump Derangement Syndrome...and only the worst things you can think and say about him are acceptable to those in its grip.
   Personally, I think that there's an extremely strong anti-Trump case to be made on the basis of the actually-available, unspun, not-at-all-made-up evidence. Not that it matters what I think. The point I'm trying to make here would be no weaker if I were a Trump supporter. In fact, even mentioning my position against Trump is probably cheating. I basically think that the left simply won't take seriously arguments originating from the right anymore--it's all ad hominems all the time.
   I understand this stuff making people crazy. What could be more understandable? But that doesn't mean that it's good to be crazy about it, nor bad to be sane. And I'm afraid that's where we've gone. Only the arguments of good people are to be admitted to the discussion, and all good people must be out of their minds with hatred of white supremacists. Anything less than ecstatic religious fervor is suspect. Any effort to be dispassionate is self-discrediting.
   I maintain the retrograde notion that truth matters, no less now than ever. And I find the lurking idea that maybe it shouldn't matter in cases like this to be alarming in the extreme.

Standard disclaimer: I could be wrong.

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