Thursday, July 11, 2019

David Frume does Trump's 4th of July Speech

So I've seen this making the rounds.  Frum is, of course, what's known as a Never Trumper.  That is largely those Republicans, conservatives, or others who are not to the left or Democrats who nonetheless fully oppose Donald Trump.

It's possible that more than Democrats, Never Trumpers invest almost everything they have in criticizing and attacking Trump no matter what.  Some have become more or less liberal Democrats, leading you to think that's where they wanted to go all along, and Trump is merely their excuse.  John Kasich, for example, was swinging to the left long before Trump jumped into the 2016 campaign.

Frum is in that group who isn't a Democrat yet, but finds nothing good in Trump.  It's been said that if Trump cured cancer, Never Trumpers would complain he's threatened the job prospects of cancer researchers. 

Nonetheless, I didn't watch or read the speech, and Frum did.  So I wonder if it's a fair take.  That it would be a disjointed speech, or not particularly well written, I can believe.  Trump does not give great speech.  Neither did GW Bush.  For that matter, neither did Obama.  In fact, Obama was far worse at extemporaneous speech than either Bush or Trump.  His endless 'ums' and 'uhs' (which his supporters insisted was the result of his superior intellect being slowed down by an obligation to consider the weak minded masses), was grating to the point of distraction.  Obama also became dull and dour by the end.  It's one of the 'Emperor's New Clothes' moments that everyone praised Obama as the Great Orator no matter how bad he was.  Compared to Bush?  Trump?   Yeah he was better.  But only by comparing him to the worst, not the best.

Still, the content of his Trump's speech as some Napoleon as Hitler imperialist conqueror is something I wonder about.  Is that a fair critique?  Was it too much power not enough virtue?  I can see that as a possibility in just the snippets I did read. Or is it fair to say it balances the Lefts 'America as Nazi genocidal racist nation of evil and failure and ineptness'?  Is it fair to consider apart from eight years of Obama's 'no matter how bad the world is, America is always as bad if not worse'?  For that matter, Clinton also peddled that notion.  On a Christian level, Pope Francis seems content to assure the word that we have seen evil, and it's usually in the pews of Christian churches - especially in the Western democracies.

So just curious.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Let me know your thoughts