Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
You have to look at these things issue by issue.
That National Review article saying we must never view Trump in an issue-by-issue fashion is perhaps one of the dumbest things I have ever read. It is intellectually indefensible.
For eight years, conservatives took the position that everything Obama did was bad. It was total war -- even when he pushed their own policies, they fought him. It was a national embarrassment, a degradation of our democracy.
I totally understand progressives (and apparently Buckley conservatives) detesting Trump and wanting to take the same approach. But that doesn't make it wise.
Policy is a buffet. You get behind what you like, fight against what you don't (or find a way to circumvent it). You also have to apply skepticism to every policy, as this is the only way to try to avoid the law of unintended consequences. No sane person says, "I am progressive, and therefore any policy that trends progressive is fine with me." This is, again, generalizing.
Being a relativist is a good thing. Religious freaks hijacked the term and made "moral relativism" a pejorative. I think we should embrace it and defend it. It's the first step toward true enlightenment, and the end of our sclerotic political parties.
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O.K., this is hard because I am not as apt as you at preventing my rampant emotions from completely disrupting my ability to think critically. But I think I am getting your point. If politics were a meal you were having in a restaurant, it would not be a traditional meal where you, for example, pick an appetizer or salad from a list of several such offerings, and then pick one entree out of the five or six they have available. That's more like old school GOP. Nor is it a tapas or small plate situation where you get a number of different dishes, none of which is really an entree, but together they fulfill the role of the traditional appetizer-entree-dessert format. That's more like identity politics. It's more like a meal where you have multiple appetizers and entrees all available to you at the same time, and you serve yourself so you can have a little bit of each, if you wish, or just a few of the offerings, or you could just fill your plate with meat from the carving station and call it a meal. You know what, I'm sorry, this makes no sense. I don't know where I got the idea for this stupid fucking metaphor in the first place. It's moronic. Like sharpshooting with a shotgun. No, that metaphor was stupid too. Never mind.
