Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse



BERLIN — An American university established a quarter-century ago to educate a new generation of leaders and scholars after communism’s collapse in Central and Eastern Europe said Monday it has been kicked out of its home in Hungary.

The ejection marked one of the surest signals to date of autocracy’s return to the country, and the region, after decades of relative freedom. It is the first time a university has been forced out of an European Union nation.

Central European University has long been considered among the world’s finest graduate schools, attracting students from across the globe, and it is widely seen as the best in Hungary.

But the university, which was founded by Hungarian American financier George Soros, has also been the https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/amid-illiberal-revolution-in-hungary-a-university-with-us-roots-fights-to-stay/2018/09/03/7061771c-a547-11e8-a656-943eefab5daf_story.html?utm_term=.a911e567351c (target for nearly two years) of a right-wing government that has systematically consolidated control and marginalized dissent.
 


Grading on the steep curve by which he is judged, President Trump may have had his most successful international outing at the Group of 20 summit that concluded on Saturday in Buenos Aires. But that’s not because he accomplished anything significant. He didn’t. It was simply because he did not commit a massive gaffe.

...

No wonder Trump so often looked distracted in Buenos Aires or felt compelled to cancel several meetings. Barely able to perform the duties of his office in the best of times, he is now preoccupied with his political survival, which no longer appears assured.
 


BERLIN — An American university established a quarter-century ago to educate a new generation of leaders and scholars after communism’s collapse in Central and Eastern Europe said Monday it has been kicked out of its home in Hungary.

The ejection marked one of the surest signals to date of autocracy’s return to the country, and the region, after decades of relative freedom. It is the first time a university has been forced out of an European Union nation.

Central European University has long been considered among the world’s finest graduate schools, attracting students from across the globe, and it is widely seen as the best in Hungary.

But the university, which was founded by Hungarian American financier George Soros, has also been the https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/amid-illiberal-revolution-in-hungary-a-university-with-us-roots-fights-to-stay/2018/09/03/7061771c-a547-11e8-a656-943eefab5daf_story.html?utm_term=.a911e567351c (target for nearly two years) of a right-wing government that has systematically consolidated control and marginalized dissent.


 
Counter-intuitive though it may seem, Trump winning was a political disaster for the white working class, especially older whites. They were once pandered to in elections; now it's no longer possible to indulge the pretense that their concerns are economic - or fixable. /1

That's because there's no ground for a policy fix or a compromise with people whose basic position is that they want America to be white, sorta Christian, and frozen in 1963 - except with 2018's drugs, sexual liberty, govt transfer payments, ESPN channels, and internet porn. /2

That's why I'm tired of people declaring conservatives (like me, Boot, Rubin, Wilson and others) who still believe in limited government, fiscal responsibility, a superpower foreign policy, and individual freedom to be "not conservatives" because we won't pander to populists. /3

Who's more liberal? Us, or the working class Trump voters who are always looking to Daddy to excuse them for out-of-wedlock births, their embrace of a defeatist foreign policy, rampant drug abuse, chronic underemployment, and endless demands for government solutions? /4

This "it's not your fault, the system has it in for you" bullshit pioneered by Bannon and weaponized by Trump is something conservatives castigated liberals for saying to minorities years ago. And rightly so: it deprives people of agency and responsibility. /5

If sucking up to small-town populism - the worst melding of ignorance and self-pitying, insecure nationalism - is now "conservative," then the word has no meaning. Conservatives were once prudent, incremental, patriotic, and stoic. (Like, say, the President who just passed.) /6

Yes, we were also hidebound, resistant to needed change, overly cautious, too wrapped up in our sense of tradition, and often indifferent to the struggles of others. (We were also the counterpart to progressives who needed the sensible ballast of prudence and judgment.) /7

Conservatives and liberals need each other to make progress. What we're seeing with Trumpism, especially two years in, is neither conservative nor liberal. It is a stubborn demand that the world treat white working class adults like children. To coddle them with soothing lies. /9

So enough with the woes of the Iowa farmers who fear black and female presidents, or New Hampshire townies who fear immigrants without ever seeing one anywhere near them. That's not "conservative" any more than Occupy Wall St guys taking dumps on police cars are "liberal." /10

I don't know what it's going to take for Generation Fox to figure it out. I now seriously doubt they will come to their senses, if they ever had any. (This is why I have very little hope that anything Mueller or anyone else says is going to move that 30-40%.) /11

That intransigence is the disaster for the white working class: because it shows there's no point in trying to compromise with what were once legitimate concerns about taxes, foreign affairs, education, etc. They've traded that agenda for mindless Trumpian ethno-nationalism. /12

That kind of political agenda can't be reasoned with. It can only be defeated. And realizing that this is no longer a rational political debate is not good for America (or Europe, or anywhere else), but that's how it has to be. /13x

Thread by @RadioFreeTom: "Counter-intuitive though it may seem, Trump winning was a political disaster for the white working class, especially older whites. They were […]"
 
Back
Top