Steve Bannon Hardest Hit

President Trump gave reporters a "tour" of the new ballroom.  People have opinions about it. Mine has changed. In the wayback machine, on the day it was first announced, I thought it was terrible, for the same reason I didn't like it  (see middle of the link) when the Obamas put out a huge tent so they could do a grand, emperial-style state dinner instead of the republican-sized one dictated by the size of the White House. I want to stick with republican scale. 

But then I read up on the way the war in Ukraine is being fought with drones, or how we demolished practically the entire Iranian cabinet at one meeting and realized the days of presidents entertaining in tents outside -- the days of being in non-hardened locations-- are probably forever gone, and the Prez, as per usual, is showing foresight and love of country while managing to communicate only (before today anyway) "the biggest, the best."  

But whatever. What I can't believe is how the press buried the lede.  In the course of his "tour," the President made the point that the ballroom will be finished just as he is finishing his term (scroll to about a minute in), so the ballroom is for future presidents, not himself.  Guys:  this means he has no plans to run for a third term! 

What I Saw At The Stop the Steal Rally in DC

Since it was predictable that the legacy media would report only on ugly clashes and try to portray everyone as a racist, I spent Saturday afternoon taking pictures and talking to people at #StoptheSteal in DC. Here are some photos and my firsthand impressions of the mood. 

I am aware of only two ugly incidents during the rally and March, both of which preceded my arrival at about 12:30 pm.  You've probably seen the videos:  white folks in BLM shirts harass a black woman taking her kids to the rally. And antifa types mixing it up, being separated out by the cops, and meanwhile, one of the marchers uses his bullhorn to hit.  

Make of that what you will, but I didn't see anything even remotely like that for the four hours I was there, both at the rally at Freedom Plaza and then marching up to the Supreme Court, where a series of folks made remarks. I made it a point to leave before it started getting dark, because that's when Antifa types come out (you know, after the crowds thin and they can pick on the few). 

This was among the most diverse crowds I've seen, rivaling the March for Life for being "here comes everybody." Except there were a lot more working class white men than you might see at the March for Life. Black, white, latino, gay, young, old, families..... The surprise for me was the number of Chinese / Taiwanese immigrants who are deeply fearful the nation's media and other elites are all in the pocket of the Chinese Communist Party. 

I didn't see any signs or hear any slogans that had anything to do with white supremacy. I did stand for a while next to a guy whose appearance gave me the creeps. His look seemed aggressive: lots of tattoos, including on his neck, and piercings involving not earrings but needles and such. And his American flag was mounted on a baseball bat (only thing of that kind I saw). But his comments on the speeches were appropriate and his chit-chat with people standing nearby --including people of color-- was courteous and even sweet, which is not like anything I've heard before from skinheads, so if he was a racist, he was hiding it. 

This young man is the first person I ran into at the rally. He was in the same Metro train with me. I was impressed that he was willing to ride on the train with his big Trump flag when he was traveling alone, and I asked him whether he was afraid at all.  "Not at all." 

I asked him what brought him there and he said he was worried about the loss of the power of "we the people" in light of the non-transparency of many of the vote counts. 

He likes Trump, although is to the right of Trump on several issues -- wants more free market solutions for healthcare, including medicaid. 

I asked him if he'd grown up in a household that thought like that and he cracked up laughing. "Noooooo." So I asked if he got flak from the African American community for supporting Trump. He said his folks and most of his extended family hate that he supports Trump, but that he has been his own man since grammar school, when he took up skateboarding and loved punk rock music. He was bullied terribly for liking punk rock and for being a skateboarder, and that is what put him on the road to doing his own reading and looking into things.  It was sort of funny. He seems to think that in his circle, it was worse to be a skateboarder than to be a Republican. 

These two guys were chinning like old pals, so I asked them how long they'd been friends and they'd just met at the rally. One is from Cincinnati and the other from Detroit. Each came because he thinks his ability to earn a living depends on a Trump presidency, and because they think the fix is in. 

As I say, a sizable contingent of all kinds of Chinese immigrants and Taiwanese who believe everything we hear from legacy media and politicians now comes at the behest of the CCP. They had lots of literature out about this.  (In fact, a Chinese friend of mine is the person who told me about this rally.) 

While my bro and I were at Freedom Plaza listening to the gearing-up before the march, people were mingling and having a good time. A gal originally from Guatemala was going around introducing herself and thanking people for being there. She said she fears the US is falling prey to the kind of tricks she has seen under dictatorships and feels alone when she watches the news.  "We feel so isolated, but when we get together we encourage each other." Here are some other photos, just to give you the mood. 

This man was blessing people in the name of Jesus as they passed by

This man was laughing at CNN. "They say we're just 10,000 people, y'all." (The crowd was at least equivalent to the 2nd- largest March for Life I've ever been at -- on the order of 500-750,000 it seemed to me from within it. Though I am a bit skeptical of the most popular aerial shot of the crowd going around. The crowd never seemed that dense to me and I wonder whether those are photoshopped Obama inauguration photos. Just asking.).  My brother said the solution was that CNN should turn off its cameras and leave the area, and then we would count for them. 

Brandon Tatum in the flesh, doing photos w/ fans 

A drag queen calling herself "Lady Maga" was a popular photo op for the crowd

Make of it what you will, but if you think it was all a bunch of haters, racists, and ignorant boobs, you are being lied to. 

A Most American 4th of July

Cousins are in town, so we braved the intermittent thunderstorms for the Trump-enhanced Independence Day celebrations on the Mall last night.

I must confess I owe both the President and probably my fellow Washingtonians something of an apology. I forgot what people are like and let the nattering nabobs of negativity propagandize me about what the event would be.

What I didn't fall for: the claim that no tank has ever rolled down the streets of Washington before and that the extravaganza proves the President is a Caesar who will never relinquish office.  Yawn. So said they about Clinton and Obama. And tanks on our streets? Many presidents have done it, and not just for a national celebration, but for their personal inaugurations. JFK had blooming Pershing Missiles, indeed a parade of missiles, at his inaugural.

What I did fall for: that the event had become so tainted by Trump that only his supporters would be there, along with "the resistance."  I had no stomach for a Trump rally on the nation's day, and I had some mild anxiety about taking kids to an event where antifa might show up to punch them because they are young and white and celebrating the Declaration of Independence, so therefore assumptions can be made! 

I forgot that people like fireworks, and you shouldn't listen to the kind of person who is too sophisticated for a parade in the first place.

WaPo, I see in a passing headline this morning, says yesterday's celebration thrilled supporters and angered critics. True as far as it goes, but it's a load of old tosh if they are suggesting that the only folks on the mall were Trump supporters. The crowd on the mall was the usual lot: Americans and DC tourists there for a good time and a show.

Yes, I've seen the twitter videos of folk burning flags outside the White House, but that was off-site and broke up by the time we arrived -- we saw some pinched-looking faces with sour signs heading into the Metro stop from the White House as we exited. And yes, there were protestors on the Mall. I'll get to them in a second.

But the surprisingly massive crowd (we almost bailed because of how hard the rain fell intermittently, and wondered if events would be called off) was thrilled because the air show was great fun.

I'll tell you the moment I gave over anxiety and was won over. We were yet a couple of blocks from the Mall and two planes appeared in the distance appearing to carry a ribbon between them. I thought that was strange and paused to get a look. And, lo, as the trio came into view, I realized the "ribbon" was a stealth fighter, making no noise, and suddenly appearing like an uncloaked Romulan Bird of Prey. My brother, who'd been having the same thought, called out, "Oh! It's a Stealth Fighter!" And everyone on the street  was captivated. Everyone looked up, everyone exclaimed with surprise, everyone tried to capture it on phones. It was fantastic, and I felt proud. (The photo is a later shot of approaching Blue Angels, I believe.)


On the Mall itself, we ended up in front of the World War II Memorial, and right near the space allotted for protestors to put up their Trump Baby balloon, and a big Trump on the Toilet effigy. I would say there about 30 resisters, all-told. Mostly (though not only) white Boomers, for what it's worth, and a multi-racial and multi-ethnic crowd treated them as tourist attractions and took pictures of them. The Trump Baby was a major selfie-magnet all afternoon.

Here's a few seconds of the most energetic protestors. Everyone looks up to enjoy the flyover. And then the shouts return: "Overcompensating! Overcompensating!"

The crowd, as I say, was genuinely and notably diverse. Lots of young people and families of every imaginable race and ethnicity (this really is a GREAT country in that respect). Our immediate neighbors on the grass were black, hispanic, Asian, Indian, Muslim. There was a lot of hijab on the Mall last night.

I wish my video of this cutie-pie had come out. She was dancing to all the festive marches being played

I'm not saying there weren't MAGA hats. There were (including a few on black and hispanic and even apparently near-Eastern heads). But I am quite certain the vast majority of people were there for completely a-political reasons. It was not a Trump support-fest, nor much of a protest. It was just the good ol' 4th of July, as ever.

In fact, the strong vibe I got from the crowd was the determination NOT to be politicized and NOT to be angry. The protestors were treated as part of the show. Practically everyone was wearing flag garb in some form. (Some of the young Muslim families had the women in hijab and jilbab, but the kids in flag t-shirts.) When John Stamos, leading the NSO concert from the West Wing of the Capitol, (which we could hear perfectly through speakers) urged the country to unite as friends, a cheer went up from the crowd. I sensed in that cheer a form of "resistance" that is inchoate and no one has taken into account because it's not partisan. When the national anthem began, everyone enthusiastically stood, most with hand over hearts. I looked around to see if people were kneeling, or if there was anyone restive about the anthem, and no, they were not. There were a lot of tourists and presumably immigrants in the crowd, so not everyone knew the words. But everyone was respectful, and many people were belting it out, as they did the other patriotic songs being played.

I didn't hear Trump's speech, but the twitterverse seemed to agree that he left himself out of it and really did just salute America. And he really did put on a great show. The flyovers were delightful and the fireworks display the absolute best I've ever seen. I felt, looking around at all the genuinely diverse young families, that America was receiving something it needed -- a moment to breathe unpoliticized air and sing the old patriotic hymns together. And also that somehow, underneath it all,  she is still managing to assimilate newcomers to herself. People still find her lovable and want to be here and be proud of being here and join in singing for God to shed his grace on her.

I always note around town that it's mostly African American men who sell the MAGA hats and t-shirts. I don't imagine that means they vote Trump, but they at least don't fear him enough to refuse to make a buck off his merchandise. As the crowd was dispersing, I couldn't help but note that one such fellow with a huge table full of items was doing brisk business, and everyone around the table was non-white.  I conclude nothing about how those people will vote -- I'm guessing many of them are tourists buying souvenirs and the act is apolitical. But I noted it because it suggests that the President is not toxic in the way elite opinion (and my Facebook page) makes him appear. He's just the U.S. President, another one who will come and go.

Obviously these are just impressions and intuitions, but I didn't get the vibe of people being on the Mall to own the libs or to make any point at all. I rather got the vibe that normal people of all colors and creeds don't inhabit the highly charged hate-your-neighbor world of the politician and the pundit and the twitter-verse. To the extent they are aware of that world at all (I asked myself how many of the people around me watch and respond to multiple cable news networks), they resist being told to be angry with each other or to hate the country's symbols. Normal people just like cool planes and fireworks and festive occasions, and they love their country (or find it normal that citizens of a country they are visiting do) and were out to enjoy these things, without much consideration for what anyone might say or think of them. In short, a completely wholesome, American evening, politics-free.

Updated: The Mooch: More of a Front-Stabber

Update: Well.  Wish this had happened before I had the urge to put these thoughts to virtual paper.  And he was off to such a nice start. Sheesh.  --ed.


I'm not under the illusion that Anthony Scaramucci is anything but a conventional thinker on most issues, but so far I really enjoy him in his new White House Communications Director role. He's funny, and he seems candid in that when he doesn't want to answer a question he'll just tell you that and not stonewall.

More importantly, he seems to bring to the job a couple of things the President desperately needs: a guy who understands him and and a guy who will defend him, wholeheartedly, and not with the sense of doing so against better judgment or perhaps holding his nose.

Without defending every tweet President Trump has ever sent, his tweeting doesn't trouble me. It's his way of going over the media's head, which needs to be done, and it's his way of taking their smug superiority down a peg, which equally needs to be done when we have a press that thinks it, and not the sovereign people, rules. ("When you mock the student government president, you undo him," as the late Tony Snow said.)

What I criticize the President for, communications-wise, is that, like President Bush, he hasn't bothered much to defend himself (apart from tweets) --hasn't even seemed to try to coordinate messaging with his own team; and, like President Obama, he seems to have an oversized sense of the power of his own rhetoric -- as if saying stuff makes it so. (To wit, yesterday's tweet about banning trans-gender people from the military. Wake me when you find an actual policy and not just a tweet.)

Understanding the President.  In one of his first tv appearances in his new role, responding to Chris Wallace's question about his past criticism of Trump, I loved "the Mooch's" answer both because it was funny and because I think it was an effective translation of Trump for people who find him too abrasive. Watch for two minutes beginning at about 13:20 to 16, including the part about how the President teases him all the time about his past criticism. It's amusing, but it's also revealing of the difference between political insiders and the outsider who currently holds the presidency.

To make the point more succinctly, this morning we read this:

“What I don’t like about Washington is people do not let you know how they feel,” he said. “They’re very nice to your face and then they take a shiv or a machete and they stab it in your back. I don’t like it. I’m a Wall Street guy, and I’m more of a front-stabbing person, and I’d rather tell people directly how I feel about them than this sort of nonsense.”

More of a front-stabber. I can hear him saying it and find it hilarious. I also think it's a brilliant assessment of the difference between Trump and official Washington. 

Getting back to the tweets that make us all roll our eyes about what a goob this guy is. I don't think it's seemly for a President, or anyone, to be coarse. I cringe at "bleeding from her facelift," and wish he'd chosen a more gentlemanly way to mock in that instance. But the smug elites do have to be mocked to break the power of political correctness and show that they can be stood up to.  And if you ask me which is worse: to be called ugly or fat or stupid or to be called a bigot, a warrior against women, and a killer of the elderly and the sick (people will die!), I find Trump's style of insult more honest, and more in the spirit of a fair fight than the vicious, character-maligning rhetoric of the Left I have endured all my life and has only gotten more and more shrill.  The former just tells you the guy is annoyed with you at the moment; the latter is an effort to ruin you utterly, driving you from polite society. Which is more corrosive of civic life? 

(It does, however, remind me of this:)

Is "America First" UnChristian?

Peter Leithart has a piece in First Things, On Trump & Trumpism, that's probably a pretty good summary of what many practicing Christians, or at least practicing Catholics, think about Trump. It's an open-minded and fair-ish read of the President's virtues and vices, and why Leithart is wary of him, but maybe cautiously optimistic about his presidency.

There are things he says I both concur with, dissent and partially dissent from, but I want to object strenuously to this assertion:

even in the best of circumstances “America First” is not a Christian slogan or outlook. Whoever occupies the White House, it's “kingdom first.”

I'd guess that many if not most pious Catholics I know would agree wholeheartedly with those two sentences, and I think therein lies the reason pious Catholics are often abjectly stupid in politics, a field where they are called to be wise as serpents in addition to harmless as doves. I think it's also a principal reason why our American bishops, even though I admire many of them for their courage and orthodoxy and personal virtue, on the whole have a deleterious effect on American politics.

Properly understood, "America First" is the only attitude a President qua president can have. If you are not capable of defending the good of American citizens and America as a whole first and foremost, you ought not to run for office, as that is the precise job description.

Properly understood: "America First" does not mean my country right or wrong; it does not mean my country in contradiction of the moral and natural law; it does not mean my country without due respect for the just claims of other nations and individuals. It does not mean jingoist inability to appreciate the gifts and goods of other nations or cultures, or inability to learn from them. Observing the demands of justice, morality, the common good and constitutional order are in America's (or any nation's) long-term best interest.

Of course, qua human individual with a soul that will spend eternity in heaven or hell, any given President would be foolish and wicked to lose his soul for Wales. So yes, qua individual, he must govern "for the kingdom" -- meaning, he must follow the dictates of an upright conscience when the thorny decisions arise.

However, the instant a President (or his followers) thinks his political acts are "for the Kingdom," he has moved beyond the political order and is asking politics to do what it by nature cannot do. Politics by itself cannot make men moral, nor can it immanentize the eschaton. It can only provide the tranquility of order and the conditions of liberty that leave us free to use our freedom for moral ends. We must observe a space of "legitimate secularity" as BXVI used to remind us.

Such a president would also be guilty of colossal hubris. As Lincoln said when someone prayed that God would be on our side, "Let us pray rather that we are on God's side."

Nor can any President try to govern with the generic interests of the entire world in mind. We would rightly criticize a father who fed the neighborhood at large before feeding his own children (the moreso in time of famine). Not because his own children have more value in the eyes of God than anyone else's, but because his precise job is to love and look out for his own children -- the presumption being that if he takes care of his family, they will not be burdensome to the rest of the community and the community can concentrate its charity and its emergency measures on the truly needy (to cite the reason most relevant to the common good, and leaving aside a discussion of concentric circles of relationship and duty and what parents owe their children).

I'm afraid far too many Christians mistake the small-c catholic "neither gentile nor Jew" demands of charity with the corrupt and cynical cosmopolitanism of progressivism and the huge, trans-national corporate behemoths that have no allegiance to anyone, only to their bottom lines. But you can't be a good citizen of your own country if you fancy yourself a citizen of the world. The fact that a Christian knows this world is not his ultimate home doesn't relieve him of the duty to be fully engaged as a citizen any more than the fact that his children are destined for eternity entitles him to be cavalier about their physical well-being.

Without saying more about it, in this regard I like to think about how Polish St. John Paul II was, and whether that strengthened or limited his ability to love universally. And similarly I think of the example of Benedict XVI, who could not have been more German, or more specifically, Bavarian.  It does not detract from the wholesome diversity of the world for Americans to be fully and whole-heartedly American. On the contrary, it helps others rise and find their own wholesome identities.

I think this is what President Trump had in mind in his excellent speech in Warsaw in the moving passage about Polish heroism that was really a call to every decent person in the world to quit apologizing for existing, and learn to be who you are:

Together, with Pope John Paul II, the Poles reasserted their identity as a nation devoted to God.  And with that powerful declaration of who you are, you came to understand what to do and how to live. 

Democracy requires a demos, as Sir Roger Scruton has said. And the role of the American president is to serve and protect the American demos*.


*For the benefit of Peter Beinart and the similarly obtuse, this includes American citizens of any color and creed, natural born or naturalized. 

Van Jones Beholds The Power of Trump

Worth watching.

VAN JONES, CNN: When Trump breaks the rules, we start fanning ourselves and fainting and freaking out and handing out all of these protocol violations. And for his supporters, his appeal has nothing to do with protocol. It has everything to do, though, with pride and prosperity.
He’s saying, I want you to be proud of the country and have a job. So liberals seem to only see, like the crazy tweets. And we act like that’s all he’s doing. But his supporters actually ignore those tweets. You want to know the tweets they cherish? The one where he’s taking credit for the stock market that’s rising and their 401(k)s doing better and the jobs he so-called saved. If progressives want to understand Trump supporters, those are the tweets we need to be paying attention to.”
I think he’s driving liberals insane. I mean that. I think he is. I think he is. And I’m seeing more — I’m seeing liberals and progressives now so mad and distracted and depressed, I’m like, I don’t really want y’all to be in charge either. So it’s — Am I wrong? 

New Republic Endorses Shrinking the Size of Federal Government

Behold the Power of Trump, (as I keep telling you).

Just read this: It's Time for a Bluexit.

So: What are we in Blue America going to do about it? What would it mean to remove ourselves as far as possible from the federal government?For starters, we now endorse cutting the federal income tax to the bone—maybe even doing the full Wesley Snipes and abolishing it altogether. We will raise our state and local taxes accordingly to pay for anything we might need or want. We ask nothing more from you and your federal government. Nothing for infrastructure, or housing, or the care of the poor and sick—not that you gave us much, anyway. All we want is our money, and you can keep yours, dollar for dollar.

That'll Teach 'Em!

Whatever else may be said about yesterday's "Day Without Women" (and many people amply covered the fact that it was more a day without privileged women, as working class stiffs and single moms needed their pay and possibly had to scramble for childcare due to closed schools and such), I'm just not sure women are good at protest.

When we want to protest the objectification and sexualization of women, we go topless through the streets or wear vaginas on our heads.  And when we fear that Trump is going to roll back women's rights and return us to stereotyped gender roles, we... stay home and let the men handle things?

Ok, then. (It was sort of refreshing to have the most self-righteous voices on my FB wall silent for a day, though.)

Behold the Power of Trump

I've had a running joke with family and friends the past few months that I think it's time to share. I call it, "Behold the power of Trump" (you have to utter it in the tone of the old "Behold the power of cheese" commercials), and it's about things the Right has been trying to persuade the Left of for years, and the persuasion happens at last in one fell swoop because of Trump Derangement.

The Left has discovered the 2nd amendment? Behold the power of Trump!

Liberals are considering homeschooling as a way to teach what they like? Behold the power of Trump! 

He got over 1 million feminists to knit? Behold the power of Trump!

And the most fantastical of all? In solidarity with the few celebrities who dared to publicly associate with Trump, Mr. W, a man who has ostentatiously mocked football all his life, watched the Super Bowl and rooted for the Pats. My husband does not watch football, nor does he get ga-ga over politicians, and he has kind, courtly manners. I don't get it. But:  Behold the power of Trump! 

I'm not happy that the nation is so divided and that some among us genuinely fear the worst (much public protest is ginned up, but not all, and I feel sorry for those who are letting their fears get the best of them). Perhaps the fear will be salutary, however, if it causes people to understand how precious are the rights that up until 25 seconds ago they were willing to trample, and why one might want a gun even if the country no longer needs militia, and why one might want more school choice.

Update:

More: I'm a gay New Yorker and I'm coming out as conservative.   

I've already told my family, and it’s brought me closer to my father. He’s a Republican and a farmer in Iowa, and for years we just didn’t have very much to talk about. But after Trump’s inauguration, we chatted for two hours, bonding over the ridiculousness of lefties. But we also got serious: He told me that he is proud of my writing, and I opened up about my personal life in a way I never had before to him.

Reconciling gay New Yorkers to their midwestern farmer fathers? Behold the power of Trump!