The Blackpill Files, Part 2

Part 1

The complaints people have are as follow:

Empty threats and promises on Twitter that he never follows through on, such as ‘Amazon costing the USPS money’, social media censorship, drug prices, or having ‘someone look into something’, which leads to nowhere, such as:

How much does Pompeo actually care? Not much.

Caving-in and backtracking when facing resistance or for fear of ‘bad optics’, such as in 2017 backing down on the travel ban or backing down on ‘family separations’

Policy that has holes that that renders said policy much less effective, such as the travel ban excluding Sunni Muslim countries, which are a much bigger threat to America than Shi’ite countries.

Being too deferential to Israel and Bibi (it’s called MAGA, not MIGA).

Appointing former never-Trumpers who oppose his policy, quickly quit, and besmirch the president in the press (such as Gary Cohn, Jim Mattis, Rex Tillerson, and a bunch of others); appointing neocons and such such as Pompeo and Bolton.

Not standing up for Flynn and being quick to cut ties with Bannon, the latter who played an important role in helping Trump win. Trump has yet to pardon Flynn, and after Julian Assange got arrested, pretend to not know who he is, which suggests a similar fate.

Being too hawkish on Middle East policy (airstrikes on Syria such as the 2017 Shayrat missile strike, threatening Iran, imposing sanctions on counties that deal with Iran or Russia, etc.).

Too much foreign policing. Trump even threatened to put sanctions on Germany.

As discussed earlier, not showing enough support for some of his most loyal supporters, some of whom have been de-platformed, been physically assaulted, or faced reputational damage for campaigning for Trump in 2015-2016. Many of the de-platformings occurred in 2017-2019. Do you think these people are going to be helping Trump with the same enthusiasm in 2020 as they did in 2016, if at all? Likely not.

As someone on unz.com commented, “…censorship has massively escalated under Trump’s rule. He has done nothing than meekly protest/whine about it. His Justice department has refused to brand antifa as a terrorist group but prosecuted Proud Boys – who weren’t even ethnonationalists.”

Here is the petition and its predictably weak response.

Outright reneging on campaign promises, such as by doubling the H-2B guest visa program, and supporting increased h-1b visas.

Being too deferential to Ivanka and Kushner, who are pushing the administration further to the left on immigration.

The President isn’t Sulla marching through the Colline Gate with an army at his back – he has to deal with political opponents (including opposition within his own party), the courts, the bureaucracy, and endless institutional inertia, and can’t simply order a Centurion to cut the throat of anyone who doesn’t like it. My own observation of modern political history (here meaning, roughly, the post-FDR era) tells me that even presidencies that are considered successful generally get about a third of what the candidate promised before he took office done.

This above quote suggests Trump has little free will. We cannot just blame all of the above on his handlers, the courts, House Republicans, Congress, or ‘the swamp;’ many of these were his own choices. He didn’t have to end the shutdown on Schumer and Peloci’s terms, because he felt sorry for the furloughed employees (who, btw, overwhelmingly oppose Trump). It’s not like he is forced to appoint people who hate him and are opposed to his agenda, or to be so deferential to Israel, or to back down on issues after encountering resistance.

. I never expected that he would be the solution to all of our problems; merely that he would buy us some time while we prepared for what is coming. Since that seems to be approximately what is happening, I see little reason to be despondent. Here I think some important factors separating me from the blackpillers are at play.

It’s not despondency but more like disappointment. No one was expecting him to solve everyone’s problems, but rather to turn back the dial of the left to some degree, and in that regard I don’t think he has succeeded as much I and others expected (and my expectations were low to begin with). As everyone probably remembers, in the second debate he promised to appoint someone to investigate Hillary. But also as mentioned above, just his cavalier, insouciant attitude and approach to things. Too much bark and bluster and not enough bite. Unless his 4-D chess strategy is to fail and capitulate so often and willingly that the left lets their guard down, the elites have nothing to fear from Trump’s speeches and tweets promising that ‘someone will look into doing something about something’.

This holds true of both parties – Barack Obama got very little passed in his eight years in office, especially considering that his one signature achievement, Obamacare, bore little resemblance to the much more ambitious government takeover of healthcare that he had in mind, and that his supporters expected, when he was on the campaign trail

For someone who acts like a political expert and is veteran of Reagan-era politics, anti-dem is ignoring Obama’s other major legislative accomplishments: the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the overturn of DOMA, passing tax cuts in 2010 as part of a budget compromise, the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, etc. Most of these accomplishments were during Obama’s first term, and he still accomplished a lot even after losing control of the House in 2010 and in 2012. Many republicans concede that Obama was an effective president even if a bad one.