Quotulatiousness

July 27, 2019

“[T]he more educated a Democrat is … the less he or she understands the Republican worldview”

Filed under: Education, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Last week in the Guardian, Arlie Hochschild explained some of the mutual incomprehension of US Democrats and Republicans based on a recent study:

In a surprising new national survey, members of each major American political party were asked what they imagined to be the beliefs held by members of the other. The survey asked Democrats: “How many Republicans believe that racism is still a problem in America today?” Democrats guessed 50%. It’s actually 79%. The survey asked Republicans how many Democrats believe “most police are bad people”. Republicans estimated half; it’s really 15%.

The survey, published by the thinktank More in Common as part of its Hidden Tribes of America project, was based on a sample of more than 2,000 people. One of the study’s findings: the wilder a person’s guess as to what the other party is thinking, the more likely they are to also personally disparage members of the opposite party as mean, selfish or bad. Not only do the two parties diverge on a great many issues, they also disagree on what they disagree on.

This much we might guess. But what’s startling is the further finding that higher education does not improve a person’s perceptions – and sometimes even hurts it. In their survey answers, highly educated Republicans were no more accurate in their ideas about Democratic opinion than poorly educated Republicans. For Democrats, the education effect was even worse: the more educated a Democrat is, according to the study, the less he or she understands the Republican worldview.

“This effect,” the report says, “is so strong that Democrats without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree.” And the more politically engaged a person is, the greater the distortion.

What could be going on? Bubble-ism, the report suggests. Even more than their Republican counterparts, highly educated Democrats tend to live in exclusively Democratic enclaves. The more they report “almost all my friends hold the same political views”, the worse their guesses on what Republicans think.

So do they believe in sticking with their own? No. When asked in a Pew survey whether it’s important to live in a place “where most people share my political views”, half of conservatives and only a third of liberals agreed. Although in principle more tolerant of political diversity, highly educated – and mostly urban – Democrats live, ironically, with less of it.

Take the quiz or see more of the results here.

June 20, 2019

QotD: Elizabeth Warren

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Elizabeth Warren, a smug Harvard professor, is no populist. She doesn’t have an iota of Bernie Sanders’ authentic empathic populism — but Sanders will be too old to run next time around. I tried to take Warren seriously during the run-up to the primaries, but her outrageous silence about Sanders’ candidacy when he was battling the corrupt Hillary machine made me see Warren as the facile opportunist that she is. She craftily hid from sight throughout the primaries — until Hillary won the nomination. Then all of a sudden, there was bouncy, grinning Warren, popping in and out of Hillary’s Washington mansion as vice-presidential possibilities were being vetted. What an arrant hypocrite! Warren stands for nothing but Warren. My eye is on the new senator from California, Kamala Harris, who seems to have far more character and substance than Warren. I hope to vote for Harris in the next presidential primary.

Camille Paglia, “Prominent Democratic Feminist Camille Paglia Says Hillary Clinton ‘Exploits Feminism'”, Washington Free Beacon, 2017-05-15.

June 1, 2019

2020 Presidential Candidate Blowout!

Filed under: Humour, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

ReasonTV
Published on 31 May 2019

Election season is heating up, which means Republicans and Democrats are ready to sell you the candidate of your dreams. Whether it’s government intrusion into your private life or government intrusion into your economic life, they’ve got you covered.

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April 9, 2019

QotD: It won’t be easy to bring back politicians’ willingness to compromise

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I think the donors are a problem for both parties, in terms of driving choices that aren’t necessarily the best strategies for building the base. (Both parties completely missed the populist backlash on trade, for example. Now, as a free trader, I like the resulting policy. But they paid for it at the polls.) But the issue isn’t fundamentally the donors. The issue is that fundamentally, both sides hate each other, and both sides have an increasing “It is not enough that I win. My enemies must lose” mentality about politics. Combine that with various reforms that have empowered extremists — campaign finance reforms that empowered outside groups, yes, but also the shift to primaries from conventions, and the abolition of the earmarks and pork that used to grease legislative passage. Throw in the “Great Sort” into increasingly politically homogenous communities — those are the problems you need to fix if you want to bring back legislative compromise. And damned if I know how we get there, because you can’t tell people where to live, and anyone who suggested getting rid of primary elections and bringing back pork barrel politics would come off as a backroom sleaze.

Megan McArdle, “Ask Me Anything”, Reddit, 2017-04-10.

February 25, 2019

“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [is] doing for America what Jeremy Corbyn has done for Britain”

Filed under: Economics, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Alex Noble sings the praises of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as she does the heavy lifting to bring awareness of socialism to the American people:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking at the Reardon Convention Center in Kansas City, on 20 July 2018.
Photo by Mark Dillman via Wikimedia Commons.

Good old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – she’s doing for America what Jeremy Corbyn has done for Britain. Much to the dismay of the secret socialists now entrenched in the Democrat Party, she is stripping away the protective layer of bullshit that socialism normally has to rely upon to keep people from understanding its inherent failings, and is thus laying it bare before the world.

Because she is too ignorant to understand them – she actually believes in socialism, and thinks that if only it is adequately explained to the rest of us, we will love it as she does.

She doesn’t know enough history to know that everyone over the age of forty has seen socialism tried a dozen times in their lifetimes. Her sales pitch is wasted on us – we’ve seen the results before.

So when she told Amazon that their particular brand of crony capitalism was not welcome in New York, she genuinely thought people would admire her.

Instead, even the crony capitalists on the Democrat side of the aisle (i.e those who understand how the game is really played) are very upset with her – she has driven away 25,000 jobs and all the votes economic benefits that would have flowed from them.

All because she thinks Amazon should pay more corporation tax.

February 17, 2019

Lyndon LaRouche, RIP

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

When I was first active in the Ontario and federal Libertarian parties in the mid-1970s, I’d sometimes get accused of being a follower of Lyndon LaRouche. Not by fellow Libertarians, I hasten to add, but by random members of the public. At that time I’d never heard of LaRouche, and I have no idea why some Canadians thought he had anything at all to do with libertarian philosophy or politics. He was, as Jesse Walker points out, pretty much the definition of an ANTI-libertarian in US politics:

Ordinarily I’m fond of cranks, maybe excessively so. You say extremist; I say charmingly kooky freethinker. You say cult; I say fascinating young religion. You say lunatic conspiracy theory; I say spooky new addition to America’s homegrown mythology. But even my tolerance has its limits, and one of those limits is Lyndon LaRouche.

LaRouche, who died Tuesday at age 96, was a despicable old fraud, and the warmest feeling I’ve ever been able to conjure for his devotees is pity. Fiercely authoritarian in both his political ideals and his personal life, LaRouche fed his followers a stream of lies, psychological abuse, and paranoid fantasies. Those fantasies featured a big cast of villains, from the queen of England to Aristotle to “Dope, Inc.” to gay people, not to mention whichever follower or ex-follower was the designated scapegoat of the moment. One such scapegoat, Ken Kronberg, committed suicide after the denunciations turned his way.

LaRouche didn’t limit his abuse to the people who chose to cast their lot with him. He aimed it outwards too — most infamously during “Operation Mop-Up,” when his followers in several cities used fists, bats, chains, and nunchuks to attack members of the Communist Party and other leftist groups. When those assaults began in 1973, LaRouche considered himself a part of the radical left; Operation Mop-Up, he hoped, would establish his “hegemony” over the competition. But a few years later he was aligning himself with Klansmen and the far-right Liberty Lobby. He had a habit of flipping positions like that.

He also had a habit of running for president — first as the 1976 nominee of the U.S. Labor Party, then as a recurring contender for the Democratic nomination. His biggest successes came in the North Dakota primary of 1992 and the Michigan primary of 2000, when he managed to outpoll everyone else on the ballot. This sounds less impressive when you learn that (a) in both cases, for quirky reasons, none of the major candidates were actually on the ballot, and (b) LaRouche still managed to lose both primaries. In North Dakota he was beaten handily by some write-in votes for Ross Perot, and in Michigan he was outvoted by “uncommitted.”

Most people’s direct encounters with LaRouchism came in one of two ways. The first was to stumble on one of the candidate’s prime-time infomercials, in which he’d inform viewers that Walter Mondale is a Soviet agent, that the government should “quarantine” people with AIDS, or whatever other idea had caught his fancy at the moment. (LaRouche pushed his AIDS idea with a front group called — I swear I am not making this up — PANIC, for the Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee.) The second was to run into his followers as they handed out literature in public places. My most memorable encounter with LaRouchie leafletters was in Ann Arbor in the early ’90s, where they had made a big sign that said “EATING ARAB BABIES ISN’T KOSHER.” (I’ve heard people call LaRouche a “coded” anti-Semite. In that case you didn’t have to work hard to crack the code.)

So, LaRouche’s ideas were all over the authoritarian map, but he must have been a really dynamic, engaging speaker to fascinate so many different people for so many years, right? One of those orators that just grabs the attention and plays on it like a fine musical instrument?

There are LaRouche TV specials that consist of nothing but LaRouche himself talking, but I didn’t want to inflict one of those on you. You know why? Because when he’s not saying something utterly crazy, the man is boring. Lyndon LaRouche was a child of the American Weird, but he was too dull to excel even at raving like a lunatic.

September 30, 2018

Contempt for the voters (even their own voters)

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Steve Kates has been watching the confirmation hearings and associated circus acts in the US senate:

Let me start by explaining the basic framework. This is all politics. No one among the Democrat senators believes a word of Ford’s testimony. Not one of them would say a word were Kavanaugh a Democrat nominee. It is all show for the morons who vote for them. The disdain the Democrats have for their own voters is gigantic. They see them in the same way as I do: as low information, dumb beyond belief fools without a shred of common sense. They can see perfectly well that all of this has no other purpose but to make it harder for a government from the other party to govern. They want to pack the court with judges who will vote to do those things that cannot be done via a democratic legislative process. They understand perfectly well that they are trivialising accusations of rape. They comprehend without a shred of doubt that they are making the United States less governable. They can see without any hesitation that Ford is a stooge that has been put forward because the saps in their electorates across America eat all this up and hunger for more. They therefore do it because they enjoy the power this provides to them. They do it because they believe it will attract more voters than it will repel. They are making it as plain as day that they think their own constituency is ignorant and repulsive. But this is their line of work and if they are to keep their jobs, this is what they must do.

The Republicans think exactly the same – that Democrat voters are fools. And they know just as well as the Democrats that there is a proportion of the voting population that will make their vote depend on this and this alone. They understand rape is a terrible event in anyone’s life and would not nominate anyone if there were any genuine evidence that any of the accusations made against Kavanaugh are true. Aside from those members of their Senate caucus who prevented a majority vote from succeeding, they would have nevertheless taken the risk of the bad press that will follow when and if they confirm Kavanaugh’s nomination. They have a razor-thin majority in the Senate that can only survive a near-unanimous vote from their side of the aisle. They are counting on there being enough common sense and sound judgment left with the voting public to be able to succeed and retain the House and Senate majorities in November. They see the Democrat tactics for what they are.

As for the notion of sexual assault, to really believe that is the issue makes you so stupid that it is painful to see what nitwits politicians have to deal with routinely.

July 9, 2018

Nominating Amy Barrett “would be a tactical masterpiece on the level of Napoleon’s conduct of the Battle of Austerlitz, or Hannibal at Cannae”

Filed under: Law, Media, Politics, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I have no idea who President Trump will announce later today as his nominee for the vacancy on the US Supreme Court, but Conrad Black is plumping for one particular candidate:

The desperation of the Democrats to stop the apparently inexorable rise of a president they so completely discounted and despised, and assumed they could remove or emasculate just by turning up the volume and activity of their media organ monkeys, may drive them to accidental suicide over the latest Supreme Court vacancy. I have no standing at all to intuit whom the president may nominate. But if, as I suspect, it is Judge Amy Barrett, it would be a tactical masterpiece on the level of Napoleon’s conduct of the Battle of Austerlitz, or Hannibal at Cannae.

The U.S. Senate confirmed Barrett to the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on October 31, by a 55-43 vote. Three Democrats voted for her and two did not vote. It would not be easy to justify changing their votes now, as she has served unexceptionably. At her confirmation hearings, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Judiciary Committee’s aged ranking Democrat, asked Barrett about her religious views, and the nominee responded that no judge should allow personal views, whether based on faith or anything else, to influence the imposition of the law. “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that is a concern,” Feinstein said infamously. This was an outrageous comment; Feinstein doesn’t know anything about the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, and she has no idea what privately motivates Judge Barrett.

The fury and haste of the Democrats once the starting gun went off with the announcement of the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the Supreme Court, expressed their blind panic that their entire protracted regime of encroachments and embellishments on the Constitution — buttressing their centralized and authoritarian notion of administrative juridical governance with pretense to defending the rights of women, affirmative action, and the legislative role of the judiciary generally — was now under mortal assault.

[…]

I believe the president will nominate Barrett, that the Democrats will take definitive leave of their depleted senses, apostrophize the judge as a Trojan Horse of female submission, that she will clear her hearings with flying colors while the president’s formidable battery of social media and talk show supporters roast the Democrats for attacking an exemplary female achiever and a fine jurist whose only offense is to be a member of the Roman Catholic Church, by far the largest in the country with more than 70 million adherents. Remember, too, the Supreme Court in the final days of its term ruled that crisis pregnancy centers need not advertise the virtues of abortion with Planned Parenthood, and in 2016 said the Little Sisters of the Poor could not be compelled to pay for birth control and sterilization.

As at Cannae and at Austerlitz, the center of the defending force (Democrats), will crumble and President Trump will sweep the field. The Democratic playbook of endless ear-splitting allegations of serial outrages by the president, will not, finally, bring him down. On this issue, of mobilizing unfounded sexist paranoia against a flawless nominee, thereby insulting tens of millions of American women and U.S. Roman Catholics, before raising the objections of fair-minded non-Catholic men, at least another 20 percent of the population, the Democrats will immolate themselves in an unprecedentedly spectacular launch of their midterm election campaign.

Of course, no matter who is put forward, that person will immediately become the target of a supersized version of the “two-minute hate” that will literally last for months, or until the nominee is driven to decline the nomination, at which point the hate will be directed at the next nominee. Pedantically, however, Black’s use of Cannae and Austerlitz is only metaphorical: at Austerlitz, the allied centre did crumble, but at Cannae, it was the Roman cavalry on the flanks that crumbled, allowing the Carthaginians to envelop the rear of the main Roman army. Two very different battles.

December 10, 2017

Political hysteria as a tool of persuasion

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

David Harsanyi on the way the Democrats are reacting to the apocalyptic news that the Republicans finally managed to pass a tax reform:

Whenever passable Republican legislation materializes — a rarity these days — Democrats quickly warn that thousands, or perhaps even millions, of lives are at stake. Tax reform? Health care? Bogus international treaties? Internet regulations that were only instituted last year? It really doesn’t matter. Longstanding conservative ideas are not only wrong; they portend the end of America as we know it.

Why are liberals so apocalyptic and bellicose about tax reform (a rare cut that is, according to the sometimes-reliable Washington Post fact-checkers, only the eighth largest in history)? Well, everyone in politics tends to dramatize the consequences of policy for effect. A modern Democratic Party drifting toward Bernie-ism, though, is far more likely to legitimately perceive any cuts in taxation as a limiting of state control, and thus, an attack on all decency and morality. Taxation, after all, is the finest tool of redistribution. So it’s understandable.

But that’s not all of it. With failure comes frustration, and with frustration there is a need to ratchet up the panic-stricken rhetoric. It’s no longer enough to hang nefarious personal motivations on your political opponents — although it certainly can’t hurt! Good political activists must now corrupt language and ideas to imbue their ham-fisted arguments with some kind of basic plausibility. Many liberal columnists, for example, will earnestly argue that Republicans — who at this moment control the Senate, the House of Representatives and the White House, thanks to our free and fair elections — are acting undemocratically when passing bills. As you know, democracy means raising taxes on the minority. What else could it mean?

December 8, 2017

But what about “whataboutism”?

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Megan McArdle on the folks who automatically resort to “what about x”:

Last week, as you may have noticed, Republicans passed a tax bill. As you may also have noticed, Democrats were aghast. Passing a bill like that on straight party lines! Using a parliamentary maneuver to push through something that could never have survived a filibuster! How could Republicans be so brazen, so immoral, so fiscally irresponsible?

Those of us who remembered saying many of the same things during the passage of Obamacare had to beg them to stop. I mean, we could have been seriously hurt, laughing that hard.

But when I pointed this out, the good citizens of Twitter informed me over and over that this was mere “whataboutism.”

Whataboutism is defending some indefensible action by pointing to some equally indefensible action that was supported, or at least not condemned, by your opponents. (Whataboutism is usually defined as a version of the tu quoque fallacy, attacking the questioner rather than answering the question. It’s also a red herring.) After lobbing a few “What about you?” grenades, you use the resulting chaos to duck uncomfortable questions.

It is a favorite tactic of our president, whose campaign platform was “What about her emails?” Every time someone brings up the FBI investigation that is creeping closer to the highest echelons of his staff, he is fond of asking, apropos of nothing, why Hillary Clinton’s not in jail.

December 2, 2017

Reaching the limits of the “Burleigh effect”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

ESR on the recent wave of news about sexual misdeeds of powerful politicians and prominent members of the media:

So, John Conyers now hints that members of Congress have been covering up widespread sexual assaults and workplace harassment from within their ranks for years, and that if he goes down lots of others will go down with him.

This is credible. We already know Congress has been paying out hush money to the tune of $17M to keep a lid on such allegations. That figure suggests that if there’s full disclosure, the carnage is going to be terrible.

But…Democrats will get hurt a lot worse than Republicans.

Why do I say this? Because Republicans have already been through a media hostility filter. The same J. Random Reporter (and Reporterette) that will manufacture chin-tugging excuses for the likes of Bill Clinton or Al Franken positively slavers at the thought of catching some old white conservative dude with his pants down. It is therefore likely that the really egregious Republican cases are already over.

Democrats, on the other hand, have been protected by what I’ll call the Burleigh effect. You remember Nina Burleigh, who said in public she’d give Bill Clinton a blowjob if it would protect abortion rights? Yeah, that.

The sewage the press has been not covering (Cokie Roberts said every female reporter in DC knew not to get on an elevator with Conyers) is likely to bust loose now. Especially because the hard-left faction of the Democrats obviously sees this as a way to purge the Clintonites.

I predict it’s going to be a grim time to be a Democrat in the next three months. Republicans will doubtless try to prolong the agony into the 2018 election season, and might succeed. In any case their campaign to stop the odious Ray Moore is looking pretty doomed,

December 1, 2017

“Maybe Trump’s voters aren’t angry enough yet”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

One of the most disturbing phenomena of modern American political discourse is just how badly Trump’s critics are doing their jobs. It’s almost as though they’re collectively trying to get him another term in office. ESR has a bit of a rant:

I have more and more sympathy these days for the Trump voters who said, in effect, “Burn it all down.” Smash the media. Destroy Hollywood. Drain the DC swamp. We’ve all long suspected these institutions are corrupt. What better proof do we need than their systematic enabling of rape monsters?

As a tribune of the people Trump is deeply flawed. Some of his policy ideas are toxic. His personal style is tacky, ugly, and awful. But increasingly I am wondering if any of that matters. Because if he is good for nothing else, he is good for exposing the corruption, incompetence, and fecklessness of the elites – or, rather in their desperation to take him down before he breaks their rice bowls they expose themselves

Yeah. Is there anyone who thinks all these rocks would be turning over if Hillary the serial rape enabler were in the White House? Nope. With her, or any establishment Republican, it’d be cronyism all they way down, because they’d feel a need to keep the corrupt elites on side. Not Trump – his great virtue, perhaps overriding every flaw, is that he doesn’t give a fuck for elite approval.

Maybe Trump’s voters aren’t angry enough yet. It’s not just a large number of women our elites have raped and victimized, it’s our entire country. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our debt is astronomical, our universities increasingly resemble insane asylums, our largest inner cities are free-fire zones terrorized by a permanent criminal underclass. And what’s the elite response? Oh, look, a squirrel – where the squirrel of the week is carbon emissions, or transgender rights, or railing at “white privilege”, or whatever other form of virtue signaling might serve to hide the fact that, oh, look they put remote-controlled locks on their rape dungeons.

It’s long past time for a cleansing fire.

October 27, 2017

QotD: Russian meddling in US politics

Filed under: History, Politics, Quotations, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In last week’s decidedly un-jocular “news”letter, I wrote about how the hypocrisy of the Left’s newfound outrage at Russia’s meddling in our politics can’t be summarized by saying “Romney was right!” when he said Russia was our biggest geopolitical foe in a debate with Barack Obama. Starting with George Kennan’s Long Telegram [link], conservatives spent the entirety of the Cold War pointing out that the Russians were undermining American life, and we got mocked and ridiculed for it by self-styled sophisticates who thought such concerns were little more than paranoia.

The ridicule didn’t end with the Cold War (when, by the way, the extent and danger of Russian meddling were much greater than they are now). Liberals were so invested in the idea that the political Right made too big a deal about Soviet Communism and that we used our hawkishness as an unfair wedge issue against Democrats that when Mitt Romney said an incandescently true thing about Putin’s Russia, liberals rolled their eyes and then laughed uproariously at Obama’s “the 1980s called” quip. In other words, they were so married to the myth of their moral and intellectual superiority, liberals preferred to stick with the punch-line than even imagine that reality wasn’t on their side.

Jonah Goldberg, “Binders Full of Asininity”, National Review, 2017-10-13.

August 21, 2017

Solar Eclipse: Republicans, Democrats, & Libertarians React!

Filed under: Humour, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Published on 20 Aug 2017

How are Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, reacting to tomorrow’s solar eclipse?

With the mixture of denial and panic that they bring to virtually every issue, from regulations to crime to climate change.

Fortunately, there is a third way, one grounded in rational debate, respect for the limits and power of science, and sound policy.

For links and info, go to https://reason.com/reasontv/2017/08/20/solar-eclipse-denialism-and-alarmism

Script and editing by Sarah Rose Siskind.

Starring Andrew Heaton, Sarah Rose Siskind, and Jim Epstein.

Produced by Andrew Heaton and Sarah Rose Siskind.

July 28, 2017

Game of Thrones in the DC swamp, where nobody has read Sun Tzu’s Art of War

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Kurt Schlicter offers some strategic advice to President Trump, illustrated by some recent Game of Thrones narrative (dunno how accurate, as I’ve neither read the books nor watched any recent TV episodes):

President Trump has done remarkably well so far, considering the hatred, contempt, and subversion he faces from members of his own party – much less the garbage he endures from the astonishingly inept and newly Russophobic Democrats. These nimrods’ bright idea for appealing to the deplorable people we call “normal Americans” is to take the New Deal and replace the adjective with “Better.” It has yet to occur to them to try not calling us “Jesus-loving gun freak racists who aren’t afraid enough of the weather and don’t believe women can have penises too.”

But it’s bad strategy to rely upon the lameness of your opposition. Instead, the president should be focused on launching a disciplined and overwhelming attack against the establishment to force his agenda through. But he’s not doing that. He’s messing up by going off on emotional tangents, and it will catch up with him.

[…]

Spoilers follow, so stop reading if you care.

Here’s the problem. The president has some huge challenges. He has limited combat power – yeah, he has a lot, and while it is still superior to his enemies, it is not unlimited. There’s a basic military rule of thumb that you break at your own peril. You do not split a superior force.

When you split a superior force, the enemy can then move to defeat you piecemeal. A superior force nearly guarantees a win. Take the guaranteed win. Grind out the victories. Don’t split your army.

They did in a recent Game of Thrones episode. The hot girl with the dragons met with the sort-of-hot woman with the three hard-six daughters, the bi-curious pirate chick, the sassy old lady who used to be Emma Peel, and the differently-abled person of shortness, and they came up with a war plan. It was a terrible war plan. They split their vastly superior force in two instead on focusing on the castle with the hot woman who was getting it on with her brother before she became a big enough star not to have to do nudity.

Terrible plan. Naturally, the enemy destroyed their fleet because they split their forces and ditched their dragon air cover like morons. I expect the producers thought it was super progressive to have the generals be all either women-identifying women or dwarves, but then they got thoroughly beaten by a cis-vertical phallo-person of pallor.

I’m not sure that’s the girl/midgetpower message they meant to convey, but whatev. The point is that when you lose focus and try to fight every battle, you risk losing every battle. The Sessions fight wasn’t strategically necessary – hell, “winning” would mean someone even worse because there’s no way the Senate will confirm anyone as AG that Trump actually wants.

Focus. Discipline. No one enemy can compete with the president, but a bunch of enemies can. Using the superior force at hand in a cunning, targeted way can bring back the winning. But uncoordinated, quixotic, emotion-driven lashing out? No, that’s what the Democrats and the Fredocons want from the president – mostly because they know from their own bitter experience how it leads to losing.

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