Romney Criticizes Trump Re: C'Ville

So, again: I'm not denying that my perspective on all this is off-kilter. My guess would be that it's an overly-literal turn of mind, combined with having had the misfortune of seeing both the actual Tuesday press conference and the bizarre CNN response. And probably also: being over-eager for people to recognize the threat posed by Antifa and the violent left. The Klan, Nazis, etc. are a given...my current obsession is with the left...and my guess is that that's part of what's making me diverge from the consensus on all this... 

   Anyway, Romney writes: 

I will dispense for now from discussion of the moral character of the president's Charlottesville statements. Whether he intended to or not, what he communicated caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn. His apologists strain to explain that he didn't mean what we heard. But what we heard is now the reality, and unless it is addressed by the president as such, with unprecedented candor and strength, there may commence an unraveling of our national fabric.

   It would seem to me (ignoring the stuff in my first paragraph) that this is Romney acknowledging that Trump didn't actually say what people are saying that he said, but indicating that that's the way it came across. However, that's not what he (Romney) actually says. It's a bit hard to explain why Romney would start out that way if he didn't realize that Trump didn't say what he's being accused of saying...but, again, I've kinda given up on the "discern the secret meaning" game with respect to all this... Something seems to have skewed my interpretation of Trump's Tuesday comments.  (Though there then remains the problem of the Saturday and Monday comments...which, as I understand it, I'm also crazy with respect to...)

  Anyway, Romney says that Trump's statement made the Klan et al. happy and the rest of us sad. He then says that Trump's "apologists" "strain to explain that he didn't mean what we heard"... Which I guess could be true, but, (i) I really haven't heard much of that; I though that basically everyone denounced everything he said; and (ii) honestly, it seems very easy to argue that he didn't mean what "we" heard...because all you really have to do is point to what he actually said...  But...anyway... 

   Then we get: "but what we heard is now the reality." I'd hate to appear any crazier than I already do...but it's a little hard for me not to see this meaning something like You didn't say that p, but that's what everybody thinks, so you might as well have said that p. That is the general sort of thing people mean when they say things like "this is now our reality." That's typically a cagey phrase, meant non-literally--and that is an issue that I can speak about with some authority... 

   Then we get the request for Trump to address the issue.

   So, it's a bit hard for me not to see this as confirmation of my take...which isn't inconsistent with the meta-point I've made from the beginning: sane people have to acknowledge that, with respect to cases like this, if it's you vs. everybody else, you're probably the crazy one.

 

   What should Trump do:  not my area, man. 

   But my guess would be:

   I guess make another statement. For the love of God, get Obama to help you write it or something. If only there were a way to get Obama to deliver it...  Anyway, this disaster has to be addressed...but, honestly, the best that can happen, IMO, is to distract everyone with a smaller, more recent failure. If the Saturday and Monday statements were interpreted as being pro-racist, it's hard for me to figure out what you can say that won't be interpreted that way. The Tuesday press conference was a disaster in a large number of ways--don't have a press conference! We already know what will happen. Make an address. The problem, as I see it, is that you're in a dilemma with respect to blame for the violence. you can state the truth (that elements of both sides came ready/eager to fight (it's basically Antifa's stated purpose), both sides initiated some of the violence, etc.), which will cause another spasm of hysteria in the media, because they will twist that into a "moral equivalence" claim. Or you can lie about it and say that the protesters were 10,000% responsible for the violence in every way. Honestly not sure what to do there... If we are to defer to the collective judgment of the majority, then the thing to do is lie...and...my brain basically shuts down at that point... Anyway, you have to say much more clearly this time: there is no moral equivalence being proposed between Nazis and peaceful, anti-Nazi protesters. You garbled the point last time, you gotta say it clearly this time.

   Ah, screw it. 

   There's more of interest in the Romney statement, but I've gotta quit obsessing about all this.