To grasp what’s really going on behind the endless recriminations, we need to understand that the Obama administration has abandoned its original plan to oust Syrian President Bashar al Assad, and moved on to Plan B; partitioning the country in a way that establishes a separate Sunni state where US troops will be based and where vital pipelines will be built to transfer natural gas from Qatar to the EU.
This ambitious plan is more than a redrawing of the Middle East and a pivot to Asia. It is a critical lifeline to a country whose economic prospects are progressively dimming, whose credit card is maxed out, and who is counting on a Hail Mary pass in Syria to save itself from cataclysmic economic collapse and ruination. Washington must succeed in Syria because, well, because it must, because the red ink has finally penetrated the pinewood hull and is fast filling the galley. A defeat in the Middle East could be the straw that broke the camel’s back, the tipping point in the agonizingly-protracted unipolar-new-world-order experiment. In other words, it’s Syria or bust.
There is a long tradition of democratic empires failing as a result of unnecessary military adventures, dating back to the Athenian disaster in Syracuse. It’s much too soon to tell, but the continuing US failure in Syria does tend to smack of a potential turning point with regards to the imperial USA.
Note for the historical ignorati: before you start arguing that the USA cannot be an empire despite its military occupation of more than 70 countries around the world because democracy, I suggest you read about the Athenian empire.
UPI/CVoter state polls: Donald Trump ahead of Hillary Clinton in Electoral College
Donald Trump would earn enough votes to win the presidency in the Electoral College based on UPI/CVoter’s state tracking poll released Monday.
Trump would amass 292 votes and Clinton would get 246 with 270 needed to secure the oval office.
But the candidates’ leads are narrow enough — 5 percent or less — in 12 states to classify them as swing states, meaning 156 electoral votes could be up for grabs.
So do the TRUMPSL!DE t-shirts from Dark Lord Designs, by the way. Among others. Meanwhile, Politico reports that the Clinton campaign is in disarray over Florida:
Clinton campaign in ‘panic mode’ over Florida black voters
In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re very far from being out of the 2008 crisis. The bandaids are leaking. Heavily.
Update: In an emailed statement, the German finance ministry told Bloomberg that the report on Deutsche Bank by German weekly Die Zeit “is incorrect” adding that “the federal government isn’t preparing any rescue plans. There are no grounds for such speculation.”
GERMAN FINANCE MINISTRY DENIES DIE ZEIT REPORT ON DEUTSCHE BANK
GERMAN GOVERNMENT ISN’T WORKING ON BANK RESCUE PLAN: MINISTRY
Only two more denials until it is unofficially confirmed.
It’s all about Deutsche Bank this morning again, where after last night’s vigorous denial by CEO John Cryan, who told Bild that the troubled German lender is not seeking a government bailout and that it’s balance sheet is solid, earlier this morning Germany’s Zeit reported that the German government is working on a contingency plan for Deutsche Bank. The German outlet writes that possible scenarios apply in case Deutsche Bank AG needed capital injection to cover litigation costs and include the option of German government taking a stake.
Contingency plan envisages possible sales of Deutsche Bank units, with the option of state guarantees to back the transactions if needed. One worst-case scenario involving the government taking a 25% stake would apply only in extreme emergency. All options are contingency planning and German govt hopes Deutsche Bank won’t need any state aid.
Queried by Reuters, a Deutsche Bank spokesman referred to an interview Chief Executive John Cryan gave German daily Bild on Wednesday and denied the report. “At no point did I ask the chancellor for support. Neither did I suggest anything like that,” had told Cryan Bild in response to a different report that said he had asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her support with a $14 billion U.S. demand to settle claims it missold mortgage-backed securities. Such a request would be “out of the question for us,” Cryan said, adding that he could not understand how “anyone could claim that.”
Despite the preemptive denial, Zeit said that the German government is still hoping Deutsche Bank will not need state support and only scenarios for a potential rescue are being discussed so far.
In related news, it is calculated that the insanity can last somewhere between eight and 68 months longer before it all crashes down.
The ECB and the BOJ, the two central banks most actively monetizing debt currently, have 8 and 26 months respectively, if they do no changes to their programs. However, if incremental easing is layered on, like expanding the scope of their bond buying programs or purchasing equities even more aggressively, the total rises substantially. The final answer: 68 months, or just above 5 and a half years, in the case of the ECB, were it to steamroll all political opposition and monetize virtually every possible bond (and 20% of the equity market), and 48 months, or 4 years, in the case of the BOJ.
How very strange! One would have thought those one million new immigrants would have been good for the German economy….
As time has passed, I have realized that my ability to easily defeat other intelligent, educated people in debate has considerably less to do with my intelligence and more to do with what appears to be a higher degree of curiosity, which doesn’t actually have much, if anything, to do with intelligence or formal education.
As has often been noted here, Man is a rationalizing animal. And what I have increasingly noted of late is that most people devote most of their intelligence to rationalizing what they already think to be true than they do to figuring out what they think is not true. This desire to rationalize rather than learn is, quite possibly, the intelligent individual’s biggest intellectual weakness.
Now, we all do it to varying degrees. But the more we do it, the more absurd and indefensible and self-contradictory positions we will take. Thus we see the monetarists seriously discussing the outlawing of paper money, evolutionists denying the existence of species, anthropologists presenting literal fiction in the place of history or archeological science, and Christians arguing the virgin birth of a non-divine individual.
But this is only one form of the rationalization process. The other one is to base one’s opinion on conclusions drawn from incomplete information, to argue on the basis of knowing about something rather than genuinely knowing it. Those of us who have graduated from good colleges are particularly susceptible to this, as we have been introduced to a broad range of classics, we have listened to lectures from professors deeply steeped in them so that we recognize them and know a little bit about them, but the truth is that we don’t really know much of anything concerning their details.
Which is why we will so often see someone saying that Marx is wrong without have the least conception of what he might be wrong about, declaring that Fukuyama’s declaration of the end of history is stupid on its face without understanding what Fukuyama meant by “history” – and any would-be intellectual should be humiliated upon the realization that his level of knowledge doesn’t rise to the level of a pop song by Jesus Jones from 26 years ago – and appealing to all things “quantum” without even being able to define “quantum mechanics”.
Complicating this is the common preference for binary thinking, or if you want to sound more philosophical, Abelardian philosophy. “It is so or it is not so” is the binary thinker’s mantra; the concept of necessary, but not sufficient eludes him. Consider two contrary examples from the comments on Huntington’s book, The Clash of Civilizations, yesterday.
“I suspect that it might be easier to start with worship of blood, soil and nature and work up from there. The popularity of paganism should be no mystery.”
“I would go further, and say not only that Christianity is needed for Western Civilization, I say Christianity IS Western Civilization. You can see from that why the appeal of the Alt-Right, claiming that my racial identity trumps my Church, is an idea not even worth discussing.”
Despite being directly opposed, both statements are equally silly, and both are similarly ignorant. Anyone who has read even part of Huntington’s book will instantly recognize that neither commenter has read it. The first comment violates the recounting of the history of the various civilizations in general and Western civilization in particular. Given that even a sophisticated religion such as Buddhism has proven insufficient to support the development of a major civilization, and even the highest, most noble forms of virtuous Roman paganism failed to compete successfully with Christianity, it is obvious that working up from the sort of pre-civilized animism that the commenter recommends would not be easier than metaphorically taking whips to the temple and reforming the Christian churches. In fact, it is improbable to the point of being a virtual impossibility.
As for the idea that Christianity IS Western Civilization, this is a historical and definitional absurdity. While religion is much more important in defining civilizations than the secular students of liberal democracy would like to admit, a civilization is considerably more than its definitive religion. Thus, both the following statements by Huntington are both true:
People of the same race can be deeply divided by civilization; people of different races may be united by civilization….The crucial distinctions among human groups concern their values, beliefs, institutions, and social structures, not their physical size, head shapes, and skin colors.
A civilization is the broadest cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities, religious groups, all have distinct cultures at different levels of cultural heterogeneity. It is defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people. People have levels of identity: a resident of Rome may define himself with varying degrees of intensity as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a Westerner. The civilization to which he belongs is the broadest level of identification with which he strongly identifies.
First, an individual’s values, beliefs, institutions, and social structures are heavily influenced by his race; race and culture are deeply intertwined. Second, Christianity is not Western civilization, it is merely one of the most important aspects of Western civilization; as the Alt-Right sees it, Christianity is one of the three necessary components. The idea that one’s racial identity trumps one’s religion is not worth discussing because it is irrelevant, both to the Alt-Right and to the civilizational paradigm. Both religion and race are necessary components of a civilization, but are insufficient in themselves. This should be entirely obvious from the start, given that neither religion nor race are recognized synonyms for civilization.
Third, the fact that there are three other major Christian civilizations besides Western civilization, Byzantine, Orthodox, and Latin American, (to say nothing of minor Christian civilizations such as Ethiopean) means that Western civilization cannot be Christianity and Christianity cannot be Western civilization. That is an idea that is not worth discussing, because it is as obviously and mathematically untrue as the statement that 1+3.5=1.
Now, we can argue whether a society of Chinese Christians will be more Sinic than Western or more Western than Sinic. I strongly incline towards the former view myself, though I would not view the matter as completely unworthy of discussion. But regardless, we should all be able to concur that it will not be Japanese or Muslim, or, for that matter, neoliberal.
And furthermore, the civilizational paradigm tends to highlight why Alt-West and Alt-White are not necessarily in competition with each other. Alt-White is less an alternative to Alt-West than a subset of it, as Alt-West is focused on the civilizational level, while Alt-White is focused on the national level. However, it also indicates that the Alt-White is going to have to come to terms with the necessity of Christianity to its own objectives if it is going to find any success going forward.
It can, of course, reject the civilizational paradigm, but that is a suboptimal response given the way it is increasingly clear that the civilizational paradigm is vastly superior in explanatory and predictive terms to either the bipolar superpower paradigm that preceded it or the universalist neoliberal paradigm that was supposed to succeed the superpower model.
Although I am familiar with the concept expressed by Sam Huntington’s civilizational paradigm and have actually read the famous essay in Foreign Affairs called “The Clash of Civilizations”, I am a little embarrassed to say that I made the typical college mistake of assuming that knowledge about the concept was an adequate substitute for detailed knowledge of the concept. Which is to say that I’d never read the book that is the expansion of the esssay, which mistake I am presently correcting now.
It’s a brilliant, brilliant book that goes well beyond the refutation of Fukuyama’s silly “History is Over and We’re All Liberal Democrats Now” paradigm and already it has me thinking about how the civilizational paradigm affects the reality of the Alt-Right. And it occurs to me that one of the keys to the success of the Alt-West is going to be a) Christians realizing that Churchianity is not Christianity and driving it out of their institutions and places of worship combined with b) non-Christians realizing that Christianity is, far from being a societal negative, a societal necessity for any Western civilization.
Tom Howard’s journey away from Christianity into antiquity, then back again, is one that I expect will be repeated by many an apostate, agnostic, and even atheist.
When I was a boy, my upbringing as a Christian was forever being weathered by the gale force of my enthusiasms. First, there were dinosaurs. I vividly remember my shock when, at Sunday school one day, I opened a children’s Bible and found an illustration on its first page of Adam and Eve with a brachiosaur. Six years old I may have been, but of one thing – to my regret – I was rock-solid certain: no human being had ever seen a sauropod. That the teacher seemed not to care about this error only compounded my sense of outrage and bewilderment. A faint shadow of doubt, for the first time, had been brought to darken my Christian faith.
With time, it darkened further still. My obsession with dinosaurs – glamorous, ferocious, extinct – evolved seamlessly into an obsession with ancient empires. When I read the Bible, the focus of my fascination was less the children of Israel or Jesus and his disciples than their adversaries: the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Romans. In a similar manner, although I vaguely continued to believe in God, I found Him infinitely less charismatic than my favourite Olympians: Apollo, Athena, Dionysus. Rather than lay down laws and condemn other deities as demons, they preferred to enjoy themselves. And if they were vain, selfish and cruel, that only served to endow them with the allure of rock stars.
By the time I came to read Edward Gibbon and the other great writers of the Enlightenment, I was more than ready to accept their interpretation of history: that the triumph of Christianity had ushered in an “age of superstition and credulity”, and that modernity was founded on the dusting down of long-forgotten classical values. My childhood instinct to think of the biblical God as the po-faced enemy of liberty and fun was rationalised. The defeat of paganism had ushered in the reign of Nobodaddy, and of all the crusaders, inquisitors and black-hatted puritans who had served as his acolytes. Colour and excitement had been drained from the world. “Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean,” Swinburne wrote, echoing the apocryphal lament of Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor of Rome. “The world has grown grey from thy breath.” Instinctively, I agreed.
So, perhaps it was no surprise that I should have continued to cherish classical antiquity as the period that most stirred and inspired me. When I came to write my first work of history, Rubicon, I chose a subject that had been particularly close to the hearts of the philosophes: the age of Cicero. The theme of my second, Persian Fire, was one that even in the 21st century was serving Hollywood, as it had served Montaigne and Byron, as an archetype of the triumph of liberty over despotism: the Persian invasions of Greece.
The years I spent writing these studies of the classical world – living intimately in the company of Leonidas and of Julius Caesar, of the hoplites who had died at Thermopylae and of the legionaries who had triumphed at Alesia – only confirmed me in my fascination: for Sparta and Rome, even when subjected to the minutest historical inquiry, did not cease to seem possessed of the qualities of an apex predator. They continued to stalk my imaginings as they had always done – like a tyrannosaur.
Yet giant carnivores, however wondrous, are by their nature terrifying. The longer I spent immersed in the study of classical antiquity, the more alien and unsettling I came to find it. The values of Leonidas, whose people had practised a peculiarly murderous form of eugenics, and trained their young to kill uppity Untermenschen by night, were nothing that I recognised as my own; nor were those of Caesar, who was reported to have killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. It was not just the extremes of callousness that I came to find shocking, but the lack of a sense that the poor or the weak might have any intrinsic value. As such, the founding conviction of the Enlightenment – that it owed nothing to the faith into which most of its greatest figures had been born – increasingly came to seem to me unsustainable.
What Howard learned is something I pointed out in a controverial WND column called “The Morality of Rape“, in which I noted that the very idea that rape is wrong, let alone a crime against the state, is an intrinsically Christian concept. The inescapable conclusion is that one simply cannot separate religion from culture, much less from civilization; indeed, Huntington observes that the strongest identifying element of the eight competing major civilizations is, in fact, religion.
Blood, language, religion, way of life, were what the Greeks had in common and what distinguished them from the Persians and other non-Greeks. Of all the objective elements which define civilizations, however, the most important usually is religion, as the Athenians emphasized. To a very large degree, the major civilizations in human history have been closely identified with the world’s great religions; and people who share ethnicity and language but differ in religion may slaughter each other, as happened in Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, and the Subcontinent.
Amazing how she’s barely changed in all that time; one simply can’t say the same for my hairline or my midsection. Speaking of changes, that’s the foyer and formal dining room of my parents’ old house; we’ve all had to become accustomed to a rather different standard of living over the years. C’est la vie. It was fun while it lasted.
For better or for worse, as one vows. But material things aside, it’s mostly been two decades of better. And I can honestly say that marrying her was almost certainly the most intelligent thing I’ve ever done in my life.
I’m pleased to announce that tomorrow night, Greg Johnson, the Alt-Right editor of Counter-Currents, will be joining me to engage in a battle to the death for the exclusive ownership of the soul of the Alt-Right discuss the current state of the Alt-Right, whether there is a meaningful distinction to be made between Alt-White and Alt-West, and if there is any meaning to the term Alt-Right beyond that of white nationalism.
It promises to be an interesting discussion. This Brainstorm session will be held at 7 PM Eastern tomorrow night, September 28th, and it is open, so anyone is welcome to attend although there is only room for 1,000 participants.
“It was you!” I told the man who had just saved my life. “I mean, you were the one who took out the ghazis who were planning to hit GGinParis!”
Cernovich had gotten word from his extensive global network of the ghazis’ arrival in the 12 Arrondissement, and we’d taken the four-man security team I’d hired with us to neutralize them the night before the meetup, but someone had gotten to them first. And that someone was standing right in front of me.
The little Japanese man shrugged and continued cleaning the blood off his wakizashi, then slipped it into a cunningly concealed back-scabbard that was all but undetectable under his Color Run t-shirt. He looked about as innocuous as a runner could look, if that runner wasn’t standing over the dead bodies of two corporate ninjas-for-hire.
“Let us just say you have an angel looking over you, Mr. Day. Certain parties do not deem it in their interest that you be removed from the Great Game at this time.” He looked around the forest, then seemed to spot what he was looking for and bent over to retrieve it. It was the kukri I’d dropped, and he handed it to me. “Don’t ask me who. Like these two rent-a-shadows, I am but a humble laborer working for his rice bowl.”
“A day-laborer, one might say.” Hey, give me a break. I’d just barely survived a twin combat ninja assault, and not through any fault of my own.
“No, I take contracts by the job,” he said. “Forget what they tell you. They just trying to throw you off. It wasn’t Scalzi. It was Rambo.”
“Sylvester Stallone?” I said in disbelief. I knew Sly held a grudge about Jennifer, but that was a long time ago, before they were even dating, let alone married. “Come on, he’s been over that for decades.”
“No, not the Rocky man. Rambo! Cat Rambo, the Iron Lady of SFWA.”
“Oh,” I said. “Seriously? I always thought she was saner than the rest of those lunatics.”
“She stone cold killer. Have the balls that Scalzi and Gould never did. You big threat, they scared you kill Tor, they lose lots of money. No more book contracts, no more dues.”
“If she’s worried about Tor going under, then she should put out a contract on Scalzi, not me. Or whatever idiot at Barnes & Noble is trying to turn their bookstores into restaurants.”
“Not my problem. But good thing she hire these Singapore rent-boys. Cheap, no-good fake shinobis. No respect for tradition. Now come, we must finish the course. I don’t think there is more, but I cannot be sure. We must run together now, and you must run fast!”
“Wait, I don’t even know your name!”
“Call me Tokei. Tokei Buredo.”
The Blade that Watches? I tended to doubt his mother named him that, but it certainly seemed fitting to me. I bowed to him from the waist. “Domo arigato gozaimasu, Tokei-san.”
He bowed back, rather less deeply. “Do itashimashita, Day-san.” He clapped his hands. “Now, let us run!”
“Shouldn’t we bury the bodies or something?”
“No time! The police will be looking at anyone who take long time to run once they discover the bodies. We must run quickly, for good alibi!”
My heart sank at the prospect of running even faster than before. But before we got going, we went to the lake, where I managed to wash most of the dead ninja’s blood off my arms and face. There was nothing to do about the bloodstains on my shirt, but Tokei-san pointed out that we would soon be at the red station, and no one would think anything of a few red stains after that. Fortunately, the paper with the number on it had taken most of the splatter, so I simply unpinned it and threw it in the trash.
Tokei-san set a pace considerably faster than I would have liked, which meant that were were only being passed by severely overweight men and women who were strolling along the course arm-in-arm, talking with each other. I tried to maintain a wary eye, but soon found myself focusing on simply breathing, putting one foot in front of the other, and trying not to collapse. I figured Tokei-san would alert me to any threats that presented themselves.
We managed to make it to the red station without incident, although we did have one nervous moment when a policeman guiding the runners the correct way at a junction seemed to eye the incongruous colors on my shirt a little too closely. But I waved cheerfully to him and he responded to me a thumbs up, so we avoided that potential pitfall.
“Can’t we slow down?” I begged Tokei-san, but he was having none of it. He began a rather detailed monologue under his breath, and while I couldn’t quite make all of it out, it was fairly clear that most of it was devoted to my various shortcomings of character, genetics, willpower, and general level of fitness. Among others.
After we reached the final color station and were liberally splashed with purple powder, I was on the verge of collapse.
“You go on,” I told him. “Leave me here. I’m only holding you back!”
“You think this is a war movie or something?” Tokei-san spat contemptuously, then reached into his pocket. “Oh well, I didn’t want this, but….”
His hand moved swiftly to my neck, and I felt a sting.
“Ouch!” What the Hell was that?” Then, a sudden energy seemed to fill me and I was suffused with an amazing sense of strength and well-being. All the pain and exhaustion vanished, and I felt ready, willing, and able to wrestle a tiger. No, make that two tigers. Two big, angry, Siberian tigers on steroids.
“Old ninja trick. Made from extract of fugu. You feel better now. If you lucky, heart don’t explode.” As I looked at him in disbelief and clutched at my chest, he shrugged. “Where you think idea of power-ups came from in first place, video game boy? Now Ctrl-Alt-run!”
I tried to feel if my heart was pounding particularly hard or was about to explode, but if it was, I couldn’t tell. Well, whatever. I was feeling too good to worry about it now.
“Let’s finish this bitch!” I roared, and took off sprinting towards the end of the course.
“Not so fast, fool gaijin!” he shouted, but I was too amped to pay any attention. We ran the last kilometer in record time, zooming past sweating, panting, exhausted runners as if we were on the Autobahn. Tokei-san was breathing hard, but I felt as if I’d just come off the curve of the 200 and shifted into 6th gear to pass up the sprinters in the outer lanes. We rounded the last turn, and when I spotted the colorful arched banners that marked the finish line, I actually managed to pick up the pace. A loud cheer went up as the spectators at the end saw us sprinting to a strong finish. I threw my arms up in triumph as I crossed the line, with Tokei-san right behind me.
Spacebunny was there, along with the rest of our group, all clapping and cheering and dancing to the pounding techno music that was booming out of the huge amplifiers that had been set up nearby. She had gotten her tutu back, and came running up to me with a look of relief on her face, which was quickly replaced by concern when she saw my shirt.
“That’s not powder, that’s blood!” she declared. “Are you hurt?”
“It’s not mine.” I kissed her cheerfully, but then the adrenaline boost or whatever it was begin to fade, and I swayed. All the pains and aches of the brutal 5 kilometer run, which I suppose was actually more like 3.5 kilometers due to the shortcut, but whatever, seemed to hit my body at once. I took that as a good sign that my heart wasn’t going to explode, although I did wonder if perhaps a little lay-down and a few hours of massage and aromatherapy would be in order. “They had me, but Tokei-san took them out.”
“Who?” she said, looking around in bewilderment.
“The little Japanese guy, with the glasses and the headband.” I looked back and forth. Tokei-san was nowhere to be found. “He was right there with me a second ago! He ran the whole last half of the course with me! He gave me this injection of pufferfish power-up, and I tell you, it was like crack mixed with Ventolin and Dianabol!”
“Honey, I saw you. You crossed the finish line alone,” she said, worry lines creasing her forehead. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
“I’m fine,” I assured her. And I was. I placed my hands together and made a little bow. I had a feeling that “Tokei Buredo”, The Blade that Watches, was watching over us from somewhere from the shadows of the nearby trees. But had my mysterious benefactor really been sent by a powerful corporate “angel” as he’d claimed, or was he, himself, an angel of some kind? And was it just my fugu-addled mind or had he inadvertently given me a clue as to who was actually paying for his services?
I decided that it was a mystery that demanded future contemplation, as I certainly wasn’t going to find any answers today. For the time being, I accepted my participation medal with well-merited pride, then joined Spacebunny and the others dancing in celebration behind the finish line. True story. After all, have you not seen the pictures to prove it?
Thanks very much to all of you who donated so generously to the King’s College research. Your collective donation to the Color Run is one of the seven largest the anti-Crohn’s program has ever received. The second component of the vaccine is presently being manufactured and will soon be in quality control checks. Human trials will begin in December, and the researchers should have some idea of whether the cure is safe or not by August next year, and whether or not it is effective by August 2018.
Crohn’s is a brutal and ugly disease. It is less fatal than many diseases which quite rightly receive more attention from the medical community, but it is dangerous, difficult, and demoralizing. I have the utmost respect for those who suffer from it, because it is a battle they have to fight every single day. And I really appreciate what all of you have done to help them fight it, because it gives them strength by helping them understand that they are not alone in their struggle against this insidious opponent.
And more importantly, you have contributed towards bringing their everyday battle to a victorious and healthy end. Spacebunny and I will not forget that.
The Democratic line, courtesy of the Cajun Rattlesnake himself, James Carville:
I can’t imagine that after what we saw tonight the needle doesn’t move some.
He was just bad.
I’ve talked to a lot of people that have done a lot of research and these sort of instant things, these dial groups. I think what you hear around this panel is pretty much shared by the research that I’ve seen tonight.
Yeah, she was prepared, she was solid, she did a good job. He just kind of — as he went further into it… He just — the further they went, the worse it got. They almost wanted to throw the towel in after 90 minutes. That’s enough.
The Neocon take, as per Charles Krauthammer:
It was not exactly the knock out fight that we thought. It was a spirited fight. I think in the end it was something like a draw. But I do believe that the draw goes to the challenger in the sense that Trump did not go over the line. And the very fact he could go 90 minutes on the same stage ultimately elevates the challenger, that’s just automatic for any debate of that support.
I think he did allow himself to get very defensive and she exploited that. She kept coming back for things where he wasted a lot of time on taxes, on some of the other issues he felt personally about, and, as a result, he missed a lot of opportunities. She presented herself as she always does. Solid, solid, knows her stuff, not terribly exciting but reliable. I think that is the best she can do. Likable, she couldn’t but that is not something within her reach.
He contained himself in the sense that I don’t think he committed any gaffes but he allowed himself — she could find out something personal about him that would make him down rabbit holes at a time when he had wide openings to go after her on e-mails and other items, and let them go.
The Master Persuader impression, from Scott Adams
Trump only had to solve one problem at the debate: Seem less scary. He did. Think about it. Clinton won the debate on points but looked like a recently turned zombie learning to smile for the first time. Trump was Trump. Tie.
My perspective, which should be largely discounted because, as is my habit, I did not watch a single moment of it. Partly because it’s not worth staying up for, but also because I think I get a better take on the reaction to the debate by not having any personal impression to discount.
My verdict: a minor Trump victory that will not get in the way of the polls continuing to gradually move in his favor towards the predicted Trumpslide.
This is a testable conclusion. If I am correct, the polls will continue to move modestly Trumpward. A minor Hillary win will arrest the polls at the virtual tie point that was reported pre-debate. A big Hillary win would start gradually reversing them, and a big Trump win would trigger the preference cascade and see Trump rapidly move into an unassailable lead.
The important thing to remember is that the substance of the debate, the actual words, the stuff that the media discusses, is only about one-third of the effect of the debate. Hillary clearly won the words portion thanks to Trump allowing himself to be distracted and failing to take advantage of the numerous openings she gave him. But with the non-verbal aspect, the candidates each had to meet a separate objective. Trump had to appear convincingly presidential and look as he merited being on the stage. Hillary had to appear healthy and sane.
Trump did the former. While Hillary didn’t collapse, go on a coughing jag, or go into full bobblehead mode, words such as “creepy” and “zombie” and “weird”and “Nixon” appeared often enough in reactions to the debate that it is clear she failed the optics element.
Remember, people’s reactions are cemented at distinct and unique moments that vary considerably from one person to the next. I was both mystified and amused by the reactions of some people to my debate with Robert Murphy; I couldn’t relate to their perceptions of either party and I was not only there, I was one of them! So, don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s even possible to isolate two, or three, or ten factors that will trigger the decision response in a viewer, as it could be a weird smile, a convincing phrase, or a momentary look of confusion that does it.
What did strike me was the contrast between the candidates’ approaches to the rest of the world. Donald Trump was emphatic about protecting American jobs and our national economy, if necessary by renegotiating international trade agreements, restricting immigration, etc. Hillary Clinton was much more globalist in orientation, looking to admit more refugees, work together with other nations (whatever that means), and so on. She basically saw the United States as just one nation among many, whereas Donald Trump saw it as the ‘first among equals’ with the right to put its own interests first.
The most interesting question has to do with what problem both of them were trying to solve with the debate. Clinton tried to look healthy, and as I mentioned, I don’t think she completely succeeded. But Trump needed to solve exactly one problem: Look less scary. Trump needed to counter Clinton’s successful branding of him as having a bad temperament to the point of being dangerous to the country. Trump accomplished exactly that…by…losing the debate.
Trump was defensive, and debated poorly at points, but he did not look crazy. And pundits noticed that he intentionally avoided using his strongest attacks regarding Bill Clinton’s scandals. In other words, he showed control. He stayed in the presidential zone under pressure. And in so doing, he solved for his only remaining problem. He looked safer.
This is an open post for tonight’s presidential debate between the glorious God-Emperor-to-be Donald Trump and Sick Hillary Clinton. It may or may not be the last one.
