Victor Davis Hanson | American Greatness: President Donald Trump has courted endless controversies for promoting nonconventional policies and entertaining contrarian views. From the outset, he oddly seemed to have believed that having navigated the jungles of the Manhattan real estate market—crooked politicians, mercurial unions, neighborhood social activists, the green lobby, leery banks, cutthroat rivals—better prepared him for the job than did a 30-year tenure in the U.S. Senate.
Certainly, candidate and then President Trump’s strident distrust of China was annoying to the American establishment. The Left saw China in rosy terms as the “Other” that just did things like airports, high-speed rail, and solar panels better than did America’s establishment of geriatric white male has-beens. Many on the Right saw China as a cash cow that was going to take over anyway, so why not milk it before the deluge?
In sum, conventional Washington wisdom assumed that appeasing the commercial banditry of an ascendant China, at best might ensure that its new riches led to Westernized political liberalization, and at worst might at least earn them a pat on the head from China as it insidiously assumed its fated role as global hegemon.
Trump once enraged liberal sensibilities by issuing travel bans against countries in the Middle East, Iran, Nigeria, and North Korea as they could not be trusted to audit their own departing citizens. His notion that nations have clearly defined and enforced borders was antithetical to the new norms that open borders and sanctuary cities were part of the global village of the 21st century.
Trump certainly distrusted globalization. He has waged a veritable multifront war against the overreach of transnational organizations, whether that be the European Union or the various agencies of the United Nations. Even relatively uncontroversial steps, such as greenlighting experimental drugs and off-label uses of old medicines for terminal patients drew the ire of federal bureaucrats and medical schools as potentially dangerous or irrelevant in cost-benefit analyses.
Yet since the outbreak of the virus, Trump’s idiosyncratic sixth sense has come in handy. The country is united in its furor at China—even if it is giving no credit to Trump for being years ahead of where it is now.
h/t Forcibly Rearranged.
I like VDH a lot, he seems to have the perspective of an American. I like the hell out of President Trump!! We are so blessed to have him as our president right now! I still want answers as to what the hell is going on, but lacking those I trust Trump to be in charge.
I like the “social distancing” example set in the thumbnail…… Oh! and I am with you J6P.
“The first stage in the corruption of morals is the banishment of truth …”
Michel de Montaigne
Get yer scamming butts outta here. Adults are talking.
Hey y’all don’t click on the Chink Link above
VDH is much more eloquent than I will ever be.
I’ve just been telling people this whole situation has proven that Trump has been right all along.
If we didn’t have Trump as POTUS right now we would be in even more of a mess.
Can you imagine the power grabs and Constitution violations that would be going on? Worse than now in some states.
If I had to name just one thing about POTUS Trump at which he excels it would be his ability to synthesize, to distill down to its (later obvious) conclusion, vast amounts of information; and he does it in real time. There are two elements to this synthesis that are key: Number one, he picks up the phone or gets up from his desk and goes directly to the source of the information he needs and, Number two, he listens. Intently. Studiously.
I can think of no interview with anyone who is asked the general question: “What is it like to work for, talk with, meet (fill in the blank) president Trump?” in which those interviewed don’t start their response without one of the following preambles: “He listens.” “He’s a careful listener.” “He’s completely absorbed with what you’re saying.” (or) “He makes you feel like you’re the only person in the room.” These do not describe the listening habits of the average person. I’ve met only two people in my 60-some years whose listening skills were worth mentioning at all. I don’t make the list, and you probably don’t either.
I wish I could say that our president (or anyone with this “gift” of listening) is motivated by his higher angels, but that wouldn’t be entirely true, because we take in information based mostly on our own needs. So, when you place Trump in the context of his previous life of big real estate and make-or-break wheeling and dealing, he’s had to listen to the very good and the very bad “news”. In the realm of business, one doesn’t have the strange luxury of filtering out anything that doesn’t comport with one’s preferred worldview. “Information — as they say — is power.” (The Leftists have taken this in a twisted direction, but that’s a subject for another time.)
A third, tacit, element in Trump’s syntheses is time. Before staff have picked up the water glasses and straightened up the meeting room, POTUS Trump has already determined who has made the largest contributions to solving the problem. He did this as they were speaking and he was listening and while he was mentally sorting and culling bits and bytes of information in a steady stream in real time, like a human gate array. He then connects and overlays these near-real time streams of raw data, puts it through his own experience-tested framework of disambiguation and, voila!, out springs the “shocking” announcement by POTUS Trump of “X”. I put “shocking” in parentheses because that is how the media would describe Trump’s “knee jerk”, “shooting-from-the-hip” announcements.
It comes as no surprise (to me) that the talking heads — who are handicapped by so many things, from on-air drunkenness to personal debauchery of every kind, would be incapable of even imagining that anyone can make an astute and accurate decision and, given their all-consuming TDS, doubly so. Just compare their mental state and ability against a human brain that has never been addled by alcohol, pot or cocaine, for starters.
@ Abigail
well said. I mostly admire his courageous leadership and wonder how we can get more like him. I hope that more conservatives will take courage from his example – a very empowering thing.