Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For March 3, 2021

 Feb 24

To R. Scott Clark and his 2 sentence blogpost claiming that Deconstructionists are waging war with God and will pay the consequences. This appeared in Heidelblog.

Simple declarations employing fear-mongering is a preferred tool of authoritarians. Here there is not even the slightest attempt to rationally engage in a discussion on Deconstruction. Rather, we are expected to flee in horror from Deconstruction because Clark said so.

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March 2

To Pat Buchanan and his article that speculates on whether Trump will be King (a.k.a., ‘President’) again. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog.

The title of the article leaves in doubt whether the person choosing that title truly understands the office of the Presidency. Trump himself seemed not to understand the office itself since he accused everyone who disagreed with him, especially people from the other two branches of government as having significant character flaws.

Buchanan himself doesn't seem to have all of his facts correct. He seems to have forgotten how Trump had bragged about his supporters remaining loyal even if he shot someone in the middle of NYC.

While Buchanan claims that there was endless immigration across our southern border, not only did Obama have cages constructed to hold immigrant children, he had deported more people than any previous President (see  https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamas-deportation-policy-numbers/story?id=41715661 ).

Yes, Trump cut regulations and taxes and thus unemployment went down. But we should note that unemployment was continuing to go down under Trump because it had been going down under Obama. We should also note that Trump’s cuts in taxes, along with his spike in military spending, created a spike in the deficit.  And why Trump didn't order the significant updating of infrastructure under a good economy is unknown but it produced a lost opportunity. Trump's cuts in regulations allowed for more toxins to enter the environment as well as continued to increase the future effects of global climate change.

The media's treatment of Trump often revolved around playing back what Trump had previously said. Trump responded to media criticism just like any authoritarian responds to criticism: with insults and accusations.  Trump's calling the MSM the ‘enemy of the people’ was dictator’s response which helped insulated his followers from facts and thus contributed to creating the cult like following that exists today. That cult following has been criticized by Senator Sasse (Neb) as well as arch conservative columnist George Will with Will leaving the Republican Party until the cult is gone. In fact, traditional Republicans including some former officeholders are thinking about starting a new political party.

And while Buchanan reports that only 6 Republican Senators voted to convict him during the latest impeachment, it was actually 7. And it isn't difficult to see why the impeachment was filed. For even before the election, Trump claimed that the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged. Such expectations along with insulating his followers from outside news greatly contributed to the violent insurrection of January 6.

None of the above includes Trump negligent post April handling of the pandemic which up until that time, Trump’s response to the pandemic received mixed grades.

There are many more negative things that could be reported on Trump. But what is apparent here is that Buchanan found his penchant for authoritarian leaders well matched with Trump. And is to that extent that Buchanan himself seems to have tenuous hold on political realities.