Yes, the ‘never-Trumpers’ were wrong, but it doesn’t matter anymore

Milo dumps on Ben Shapiro and the ‘never-trumpers’: Ben Shapiro & Milo Yiannopoulos ROASTING each other

“Ben Shapiro has been cast into the media wilderness!” As the trite saying goes, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. I don’t like either of these figures much, but Milo is not as big as he thinks he is (and he’s vastly underestimating Mr. Shapiro’s influence). Milo a long time ago lost his Twitter account; Ben still has his. Ben’s tweets routinely get thousands of likes and re-tweets, indicating that he is as influential as ever despite being wrong about Trump. Also he’s scoring large speaking engagements and other media recognition. Given that Trump is as effective as an ambulance with a flat tire, to be honest, no one really cares anymore if the ‘never-Trumpers’ were wrong. Milo has his fans; Ben has his. Milo has his edgy, flamboyantly gay ‘angle’; Ben has his alt-lite, nerdy angle.

In spite of recent news of the Las Vegas shooting, the Administration (and news cycle in general) is moving at a glacial pace still. It’s like that Issac Asimov short story The Final Question, where each epoch is separated by eons. Trump gets into office…first eon. Then DACA repeal…second eon…and it ends, finally, with maybe a single piece of porous legislation, if we’re lucky. What is the deal with these huge gaps…it’s as if no one wants to do anything, or the motivation is gone. Again, this should not be a surprise, as I predicted [1] that the Administration would fall short of even the most pessimistic of projections. Both sides were wrong in overestimating either the efficacy or maleficence of Trump: some on the ‘right’ saw Trump to be this great savior of Western civilization; the ‘left’ saw Trump as a madman; both were wrong.

Clinton, Reagan, Bush Jr. & Sr., and Obama all passed legislation within their first year in office, so it’s not like I’m setting an unreasonably high precedent here. I was also correct about my predictions that Trump would not be impeached. The clock is winding down…Trump has about 1.5-2 years to govern, until he needs to begin campaigning again. Come 2020, if he can’t list a single legislative accomplishment, particularly regarding immigration, then he faces a more daunting challenge getting reelected, but given the left’s pitiful roster of potential candidates, I think Trump’s odds are still ‘pretty good’.

That’s why I have tuned-out of politics for the past year. I’m assuming that the correct levers are being pulled, and if not, there are enough levers that even if some are pulled incorrectly the good and bad ones cancel out enough times to come out just slightly ahead. Policy may seem complicated, but it’s also very gradual (DACA, Obamacare, trade deals, tax cuts, etc…no meaningful progress made on any of those), and the stakes most of the time are not that high (or not as high as the media makes it out to be). The stock market and Bitcoin keeps going up, so ‘big money’ is confident, and so am I. In a deterministic economy and society, resistance is futile; just go along for the ride and make money while you’re at it. The useless financial media says to sell your stocks and that the economy is in a bubble, yet the financial media has been parroting that message since 2011, when the S&P 500 was 50% lower than it is today.

Regarding the tax cuts, if the biggest complaint is that they favor the wealthy (top 1%), and if Trump’s base is mostly the middle and upper-middle class, he should just make the cuts the same (percentage-wise) for everyone in the top 30% or so, instead of giving the largest % cuts to the wealthiest. Seems like a no-brainer. That way when the left says, “your tax cuts only benefit the wealthy,” Trump can respond, “no they don’t…the wealthy and middle class get the same percentage cuts.”

[1] and here too A competent but boring presidency