To say things are slow is an understatement..they are downright glacial/comatose, as I correctly predicted last year. it seems the news cycle over the past few weeks, and this week in particular, has slowed to a trickle. There’s no need to keep close tabs on stuff, because if something even slightly important happens the media will instantly be all over it. Unless you disconnect from the internet and TV, you won’t be able to miss it.
Among the biggest losers of the past 16 months are the far left, because Trump is not nearly as bad as they hoped or expected he would be. The far-left wanted Trump to be a disaster, in order to ensure the left’s victory in 2020 and the midterms, but also to turn the country against conservatism in much the same way the economic disaster that was the Great Depression turned a generation of Americans into reliable Democratic voters. For the far-left, victory is through negation, not creation. For there to be progress, according to the far-left, there must be a crisis from which the new status quo or regime can be built from. But it was also a major win for centrists and moderates, because Trump was not nearly as bad as they had feared. The ‘checks and balances’ did their job, ensuring that Trump was unable to do much anything except the tax cuts (which were a shoe-in), but also thank the endless legal tribulations.
It’s sometimes amusing to watch Scott Adams’ live stream to see how he twists the total lack of progress in the administration as being signs of ‘winning’. He’s not wrong though…I never once heard Scott Adams utter anything that, on the surface, I don’t agree with or that seems totally implausible. If Scott says Trump is playing 4D-chess, then he probably is.
But Scott Adams and other smart people who actually understand the political game, are correct that issues are secondary to identity, emotion, and sentiment. Trump merely needs to be able to create or convey the illusion, thanks to the media’s help, of progress without any actual progress. Issue-based voters and individuals with IQs, say, 110, may be able to see through this, but that is just a minority of voters, and even those with high IQs will still vote for Trump despite the lack of progress, simply because he’s better than the alternative.
Here is Scott Adams talking about the chemistry between Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. With Obama, however, such meetings were purely perfunctory and impersonal, and Obama was unable to form the same close personal bonds with foreign leaders that Trump is able to. This gives Trump additional bargaining power. Foreign leaders perceive Obama as too cerebral and aloof, but they can relate to Trump, who is closer to their level in intelligence and temperament, but also Trump does not try to pretend to be smarter than he really is. This is further evidence of the how the left’s predictions in 2016-2017 of how Trump would be a disaster for foreign relations, was totally wrong, as as the left was completely wrong about everything else too.
If Trump if able to forge North Korea nuclear disarmament, that alone will make him one of the best presidents and possibly even a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize (and one that he will have earned, unlike Obama’s).