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This morning (November 11) I read Greg Sheridan and Paul Kelley in The Australian. It was the first I time remember when the name Trump was not accompanied by a personal insulting descriptor. The irony to me was that no commentator (even putative conservative ones) could resist personally insulting him in the basest of terms, while decrying Trump’s crass language. Stuffed to the gills with insufferable moralising know-alls, the MSM have been temporally put in their place. But, don’t be fooled, they are sharpening their vituperative PC pens, waiting the opportunity to continue the anti-Trump tirades.
Some aren’t waiting. Peter van Onselen is keeping up the vituperation. In fact, he said that he was on the verge of tearing up his US passport. ‘On the verge’ is the operative term. Don’t expect those US entertainers who threatened to leave the country if Trump were to win to actually leave — unfortunately. They will be just ‘on the verge’ of doing so. The word ‘pathetic’ comes to my mind.
The problem I found with all of the coverage of the election in the US and here was that so many column inches where devoted to bucketing Trump personally that his policy proposals hardly got a look in. When they did they were distorted to make him look bad. For example, he is going to tear up free trade deals and put a large tariff on Chinese imported goods. How naive can journalists get. Trump is a negotiator. First there is no such thing as free trade. Free trade deals are the end result of horse trading. Second, he wants a better deal for US companies. He won’t get that by simply asking for it with no sanctions in his back pocket.
Another example, he is going to desert allies. No, he wants them to stump up their ‘fair share’ (should appeal to liberals) of military spending. Again, they are not going to do that it as a result of simply being asked.
Trump’s policies of appointing Supreme Court justices who will follow the Constitution, repealing and replacing Obamacare, negotiating better trade deals, securing the border, chucking out felonious illegal aliens, stopping immigration of people from countries which breed Islamic terrorism, building up the depleted military, defeating ISIS, tearing up or improving the Iranian deal, repairing the relationship with Israel, lowering business taxes, lessening regulations, freeing up the production of conventional energy, giving school choice to people in the inner cities, giving hospital choice to veterans, and repairing broken infrastructure all seem pretty sensible to me, and consistent with a conservative agenda.
A reminder, we — the whole of the Western world — are in a mess. We are in a financial mess and our cultural values are under attack from within. The universities and the media have been completely infiltrated by the open-borders, national-self-loathing, unpatriotic left. The public services have been taken over by the self-interested left. The fact that Washington DC voted so overwhelming Democrat (93 % for Clinton and 4% for Trump) is a stark barometer of the state of play. And perhaps the most sinister development of all, the rapid growth of Muslim populations, which wish to live inside Western nations but by anti-Western values.
Trump will not succeed in draining the swamp. The swamp is too deep and extensive. The game is probably lost. And yet, and yet, he is the last, best hope. Maybe he can lead not only a US movement but, by his inspiration, a movement throughout Europe and Australia. A take-back-our-country and our-values movement.
I became totally impatient with those who reluctantly supported Trump because he was better than Clinton; who expressed a need to hold their noses while voting for him. He is the only person who can change the game. He is the only person who has any chance at all of rolling back history. He is a disrupter par excellence when the times are crying out for a disrupter.
We are heading for disaster and some prissy folk worry that he might have touched up a few ladies in his time. I have a shock for them. I have long suspected that something is going on between men and women, which has men and women, but more often men, acting like jackasses at times. Jack Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Bob Hawke et al, et al.
Let me give my view. Trump is a decent man – as shown by his children and his loyal friends and employees drawn from all backgrounds – he is a highly competent man who knows the value of having good people around him, and he sees through the elites who are tearing down America. He is the only man for the times. God is obviously looking after America by putting him in the right place at the right time.
Thanks Peter Smith … yes Trump is a decent man despite the fact that he lacks the style of Elvis with the beauty of the women he is obviously entranced by (He actually loves women). I like his irreverence and his knack of pushing through the cant. He has the ability to penetrate a problem … to engage in problem solving thinking … the ability to position his language so that he will get a result. He dares to display a male aggression ( long outlawed for men, by feminism) which is necessary now to crash our way out of the fudge that we have been liberated into. We need a crass F*** you genius to lead us out of the fog … and its actually happening … the conversation has improved markedly ( even in Oz) since he has reared his ugly head. He, more than anyone yet, has actually made people question the dreadful orthodoxy of the PC drivel… he has already changed the conversation … the feminists are up in arms about his bad manners -this is a healthy sign. I’m sure I heard a great sigh of relief coming and going all day on 9/11 this year … perhaps it was the maleness suppressed in every male on earth, taking a breath after fifty years of sitting down to piss ? … or the souls of the dead beneath the towers indicating their relief at such progress.
Really perceptive Peter Smith to see the value in Trump and hold that up with courage long in advance of the election.
Will the virgins and the eunuchs at the ABC and Fairfax eventually support the new paradigm? Who knows; so I can’t help but think Peter Dutton and Christian Porter must eventually replace T&M to give Australia the best opportunity to shed weak leadership and catch with the US under its new management.
How good were Bill O’Reily and Sean Hannity and Megyn Kelly as commentators on Foxtel in the weeks prior to the election?
Great article Peter, I think a lot of people who have demonized Trump will be quite shocked to find out who he really is.
I agree with Peter Smith most of the time, although he is a little too Catholic for my Protestant theology. In this matter we agree 100%. I also think we are facing the possibility of a cataclysmic war in the near-ish future if someone from the USA doesn’t step up to the plate and take responsibility for international security.
I must apologize but I couldn’t help myself.
I visited the ABC website to see if anyone had anything positive to say about Donald Trump. I was not disappointed; exactly as I had expected none of their opinion piece writers had anything positive to say about the man and it appears from the ABC that the end of the world and the concomitant second coming of He who they almost all to a person deny exits, will happen either on or shortly after the 20th of January 2017.
Of course none of them can admit that they got it completely and totally wrong and for all their “education” and elitist “concern”, they are no more than opinionated, self serving hacks of limited talent and constrained intelligence. One opinion piece writer complained, I imagine quite tearfully, that if only another 200,000 people in some rural swing states had voted for Clinton, she would have been president as she was rightfully entitled to be. How absolutely dopey and totally unthinking!
The point of elections in a liberal democracy is to let the people speak in an ordered and civil way, rather than have some elitist (like a journalist or party cadre) speak for them. This they did. Of course, it may be that the ABC and its cohort of favoured opinion piece writers have no desire for a liberal democracy and that is why, they continue to cast the results in the way of some cinematic work depicting the triumph of “evil over good”. Someone should mention to these self made harbingers of doom that the sky did not fall down, the sun rose in the East and set in the West, the markets panicked and then jumped and the world continues on it’s merry way to whatever final appointment awaits.
I’m with Peter and pgang on this one. The hearts of princes are in much more powerful hands than can be imagined and He turns them whichever way He wants. The election of Donald Trump is not the end of the world. It’s simply another piece of the puzzle of human destiny. In the fullness of time, and contrary to aunties’ prophets of doom it may end up being a great mercy!
If you were “disappointed” by the ABC it’s only because your expectations have been way too high!!
But Jody the ABC is the most trusted news provider but when comparing them to the commercial networks that’s not saying much, it like comparing Pravda and Izvestia.
What is Izvestia?
> ” … if only another 200,000 people in some rural swing states had voted for Clinton, she would have been president as she was rightfully entitled to be …”
Ah yes. As a Russian satirist whose name I can never remember, to my constant chagrin, but who thankfully skipped a few days ahead of the KGB, said:
“The peepull got it wrong; they must be dismissed and a new peepull appointed immediately”
If only we had a remotely comparable personality on the horizon here in Oz. The few who might have the potential are hopelessly handicapped by insisting to “play nice”, to remain “gentlemanly” at all time. Can you imagine a Tony Abbott or a Cory Bernardi saying “we’ll bomb the shit out of ISIS”? That takes unbridled, egotistic self-confidence, bolstered by being at the head of a successful multibillion dollar business enterprise. Sadly, no one here comes anywhere near close.
Bernardi is on a junket to the UN. He’s no different to the rest of them.
Yes, unhappily. He just took the bribe and pi**ed off.
All mouth and yellow stripes.
If you are looking for perfection you are never going to find the leader to suit you.
Post election, I couldn’t pass by these below-the-line comments on Spiked as being amongst the most intelligent I’ve read and worthy of sharing. Sadly, not my words!
The left is sensing that people are no longer meekly following the script as they used to. After the disappointment of Obama, the fetish of minorities has lost its shine. Being black hasn’t turned out to be the magic elixir that brings social harmony and eliminates resentment. Now the idea that a woman just for being a woman will also revitalise a nation is just not credible anymore. It’s merely another novelty item and the customer is no longer buying.
People have seen a link with Brexit and they are correct in fearing that connection. What we are seeing is the gradual collapse of the progressive project and the complete mental separation between ordinary people and the elites. The function of elites is to articulate the aspirations of the people and give them an intellectually coherent form, that’s what the Greeks called a demagogue (he who speaks with the voice of people). But demagogues often become insincere manipulators and eventually they don’t even bother hiding their contempt for the common man (the deplorables). The elites PC religion is falling apart and shown for the emotional blackmail that it is. Their cult of environmentalism is increasingly rejected. No one has talked about green issues during the campaign even though this is supposed to be the issue of our times. Multiculturalism and internationalism are not believable as ways to seek social concord anymore. People sense they are attempts of uprooting the individual and denying him his birthright. Finally, the gender madness reveals the sick consequences of treating the human being as a toy of your desires.
The left is panicking and this can only be good, even if Clinton had won, the authority is gone and the legitimacy would have been contested by a people who no longer obey.
No, that’s not good enough Jody. If you talk the talk you’ve got to walk the walk. Bernardi has lost credibility – he could and should easily have said, ‘No, I’ve got work to do’.
I see Abbott is having a go at MT about listening to disenfranchised voters. What a hypocrite.
I agree with most of that Jody.
But I am not “looking for perfection”. That you need to straw-man me is quite disappointing – I had expected better.
And I repeat: Bernadi is all mouth and yellow stripes. I have a number of lefty aquaintances (we rarely discuss politics, of course) and they were openly pleased Bernadi took the UN bribe that Waffle offered him.
I have met Cory, been privileged to spend some time with him and I would challenge you to say that to his face. You will very quickly discover the ‘yellow stripes’ to be a part of your own reaction. Incidentally ‘taking the bribe’ (an odious assertion BTW) placed him at the centre of the American revolution…I would have thought that the correct description for such an outcome would be more in the region of; wisdom, foresight, prophetic, far-farsightedness etc.
Bernardi is one of the few in the LNP who, for some reason, is able to speak his mind. I do not know why but he is given some latitude. That said, I remain unconvinced as to his motive for establishing his conservative “think tank”, rather than establishing a new truly centre right party, or at the very least joining one of the conservative fringe parties. His acceptance of the 3 month UN junket reveals more of the political man than all his fighting talk.
colroe – Bernardi has lost none of his fight, if his weekly newsletters are anything to go by in the face of the “miniscule L liberals” He certainly was running against the flow by supporting Trump. He has had to put up with concerted flack from the left and very left who even resorted to trashing his office to express their disapproval.
We can hope to see groups like the ALA, One Nation and the Conservatives form an alliance to keep the liberals honest
It seems that the only honest place to be in the Coalition, or in any major party, is on the back bench. One’s influence is more limited, more commonly, but at least one can speak one’s mind. Move to the front bench and one loses touch with one’s electorate, one is no longer responsible to one’s electorate, as the party-line needs to be enforced. As Jody says, the demagogues stop being the voice of the people and start using weasel words and speak in platitudes and become insincere, unreliable, develop tendencies to back-flip, and lose voters by the bucket-full, or is it basketful? (My own words not hers).
I see Cory as being on a knife edge. He has held out the promise of an Australian Conservative Party, and yet told Andrew Bolt just a few days ago: “I would rather work within the Coalition to effect change. That’s the most effective and strongest way in which I can do it”. Wrong. It is the safest way of attempting to do it, but when 40% of the voters moved away from the major parties, it may not be the best way of doing it.
Incidentally, several people have commented on Cory indulging in a junket tour of the UN. This is both unfair and inaccurate. One Labor MP and one Coalition MP are given the opportunity of going as observers (it is akin to a sabbatical) and, as observers, it is a working holiday, not an opportunity to engage in the NY nightlife. It is also extremely useful with regards to making immensely important political connections. Something they would both have done.
Hillary Clinton didn’t lose the election – it was lost for her by Barack Obama. Donald Trump stood to do all the things listed in Peter’s fifth paragraph -undoing the “achievements” of the Obama years. As Professor Allan Lichtmann explained in his book “The Keys to the White House”, the incumbent party loses the presidency if seven or more factors or “keys” can be answered in the negative about the state of the country. His system predicted the Trump victory perfectly, as it had in every presidental election since 1984.
We need a new movement not a change to existing parties. They can’t change.
Manifesto of the Australian Republican Party
1 Halve politicians salaries and reduce retirement benefits to those of everybody else
2 Fund a people’s bank to bring competition to banking. Impose a maximum on interest charged and a minimum on interest paid on ALl deposits.
3 Limit investment by foreigners in Australia to a maximum of 49%. To apply to ownership of The Australian Means of Production.
4. Levee Tariffs on imported foodstuffs which compete with Australian Products
5. Renegotiate all Trade Agreements to endure Australian industries are protected.
Particularly the steel industry.
6 Govern for the majority
7 scrap funding for the climate scam
8 scrap corporate welfare
9 scrap child care subsidies
10 re assess all treaties from the UN
11 Scrap the H R commission
12 Scrap the marriage act
13 limit Muslim immigration
14 maintain strong borders
15 buy all our weapons from the US and local manufacturers
16 defund the universities research
17 defund the ABC
19 de register unions and limit published cservant union activities
20 encourage self reliance and smaller government
Who would vote for this? Every deplorable would. That would be a huge head start.
0,2,3,4,5,9, 15, 19: no, not voting for that (0 being the republican bit)
6,7,8, 10, 14 and 20: to vague to be meaningful.
12, 16: replacing with what?
1, 11, 13, 17: okay, but why not just vote ALA?
Unless the missing 18 is something awesome, then meh.
Well, if you want Australia to end up the sort of mess the US is you would support this. If you want a functional, modern democracy where the society cares for the whole, you would not.
People wanted and needed change. Clinton did not offer it. Sanders did but he was dumped, and Trump did. He may not be able to deliver but it is why he was voted in.
However, it is worth remembering that Clinton got more of the popular vote than Trump and some 46% of registered voters did not vote. Trump won, not because a majority of Americans wanted him, but because of the undemocratic and ridiculous American electoral college system.
Standard soft-left whining
So:
1) what is the *current* popular voting numbers with a reliable source, please ?
2) The US system is not first-past-the-post anymore than is Aus. Our electorates do not have equal numbers of voters in them (and the Aus Senate is an absolute model of not-one-man-one-vote), nor do the US States have EC votes based on exact population numbers. This is by design to avoid the “tyranny of the majority”. You may dislike this but you need to argue against the principle rather than imply some sort of mindless electoral chicanery.
3) the proportion of the population that didn’t vote cannot be assumed to belong to either camp. Quite evidently, these people didn’t give a damn, my dear.
Minus the carts, the opulent clothing, the blade, blood and baskets, i think i’m witnessing the closest thing to the french revolution i’m ever likely to see – the relief is akin to tom hank’s character in the rest room in the green mile when jon coffey fised his uinary tract problem