The award for the Most Ridiculous Article of the Year (maybe of all-time) goes to the National Review's Victor Davis Hanson
At least once a week, I stumble upon an article so atrocious, I have to double-check to make certain it wasn't written by someone at the satirical site, The Onion. Today, I may have stumbled upon the most ridiculous article I've read this year, if not my entire life. The article was written by Victor Davis Hanson at the far right-wing site, National Review, and entitled, "Obama and Trump: Two of a Kind." Yes, you read that correctly.
Not being the biggest fan of National Review and having not been too familiar with Victor Davis Hanson's previous work, I thought I'd research a few of his other articles. Judging by some of his other work, perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised by how ridiculous this article was. Here's a snippet of Mr. Hanson's other articles:
- "Progressive Elites Ignore Human Nature at Everyone Else's Expense" (yes, he's subtle)
- "The Four Horsemen of a Looming Apocalypse" (subtlety, take two)
- "Progressive Mass Hysteria" (projection, anyone?)
- "Sexism and Racism Are Leftism" (yes, progressives fight for women's reproductive rights and equal pay because we're obviously sexist, and we fight for police reform (against police brutality), prison reform (discriminatory drug laws), and equal opportunity because we're obviously racist)
- "Let's Talk about Obama's Blatantly Anti-Semitic Associates" (may we borrow a Linda Blair eye-rolling stunt double during this discussion?)
- "Tom Cotton, Tragic Hero" (treason now equals heroism, eh?)
- "At the White House, There's Nobody Home" (he never lets his biases show, does he?)
- "The Audacity of Weakness" (more like the audacity of thinking first before sending 4,500 soldiers to die and spending trillions of dollars in the process based on a false pretense, right?)
- "The Party of Snobbish Elites" (I'm going to need to borrow that Linda Blair stunt double again)
- "Meet the Snobocrats" (Meet the Republi-cons. See?!? I can do that too! Go me!)
So, going back to the article we'll be taking a more in-depth look at, "Obama and Trump: Two of a Kind," Victor Davis Hanson starts with this:
"Outwardly they couldn't be more different. But take a closer look."
:: zooms in on the side-by-side picture of the two of them :: Sorry, I'm still not seeing any similarities, but I'll play along. Please continue...
"President Obama is said to feel liberated, in the sense that he can finally say what, and do as, he pleases - without much worry any more over political ramifications, including presidential and congressional elections. Obama's lame-duck presidency has now devolved into the progressive bully pulpit that his base always longed for. Of course, his editorializing and executive orders may worry Hillary Clinton - much as Donald Trump's pronouncements do his more circumspect Republican rivals."
Let me try to understand Mr. Hanson's thinking here... The Supreme Court ruling in favor of keeping the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in tact, of expanding gay marriage rights nationwide, and of President Obama applauding those decisions, this somehow means his presidency has "devolved into a progressive bully pulpit"? Give me a break... Oh, and about those executive orders, President Obama has averaged 33.6 per year in office, fewer than the following Republican presidents: George W. Bush (36.4 per year), George H.W. Bush (41.5 per year), and Ronald Reagan (47.6 per year). So, nice try... What else do you have?
"Trump is a celebrity who tweets and phones his praise of and insults to comedians, athletes, and media kingpins. But so does Obama love the celebrity world. He is comfortable with Jay Z and Beyonce, picks the Sweet Sixteen on live television, and has reminded us that he's the LeBron of the Teleprompter, who won't choke under the spotlights. Both see pop culture and the presidency as a fitting together perfectly."
This "celebrity" criticism by conservatives cracks me up (as well as the teleprompter remarks). As the saying goes, times, they are a-changing. Not only are there local news networks, there are 24-hour cable "news" networks, talk radio shows, and more politically-oriented "news" sites than Sesame Street's Count von Count would even care to tally. It'd be virtually impossible for a modern-day president to not be labeled as a celebrity. Heck, even before all of this expanded technology, try to tell me with a straight face that a president wasn't a "celebrity." What's the definition of a celebrity? "A famous or well-known person." The time this country's president isn't well-known inside this county is the time we should start to worry. Oh, and speaking of celebrities and teleprompters, the so-called God of the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, was an actor! With Mr. Hanson's logic, Obama would have been just like Trump if he were to befriend Reagan back in the day while he was acting. Okay, next...
"Would the Chicago community-organizing cadre be that much different from the Trump Manhattan clique? Isn't big-city know-how key to 'fundamentally transforming' the country? Is there that much difference between Trump's golden name tags and Obama' faux Greek columns, vero possumus, 'We are the ones we have been waiting for,' and cooling the planet and lowering the seas?"
Notice how he begins this paragraph: "Would the Chicago community-organizing cadre be that much different from the Trump Manhattan clique?" In other words, he doesn't know, so let's skip past the unknowable BS from this paragraph and move on to the next one, shall we?
"Would not Trump perhaps agree with this Obama assertion from 2008: 'I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director.' Both men seem to believe that the presidency is dependent on ratings, something like The Apprentice: 'If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition."
I don't know. Why don't you just ask him, instead of speculating on what you obviously have no idea about? Once again, Mr. Hanson begins his sentence showcasing this very fact: "Would not Trump perhaps agree with this Obama assertion from 2008..."? "Would he...perhaps...maybe...sort of...you know...kind of...like...yeah...?" Yes, that's persuasion at its finest right there! Moving on...
"In his current unbridled commentary and without worry over party politics, Obama has perhaps gone the full Trump - though in the opposite fashion of tossing out politically correct themes of the progressive Left, which lead to little concrete action. So Obama is Trump's doppelganger. The two see the world in similarly materialist - though, again, opposite - terms: Trump wants net worth to be the litmus test of political preparation ('The point is that you can't be too greedy'), even as Obama professes that big money is a Romney-like 1 percent disqualification. Obama's infamous communalistic quotes to the effect that you didn't build that, at some point you've made enough money, and this is no time to profit are just bookends to Trump's money-is-everything ideas that he built everything, he's never going to make enough money, and it is always time to profit."
This has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've read in a while. Let's define doppelganger: "A ghostly double or counterpart of a living being." What Mr. Hanson essentially said was, "President Obama and Donald Trump are doppelgangers, like twins, just opposites." Imagine if I tried setting up a blind date with that kind of thinking? "So, I really think you'd like this guy. The two of you are like twins in what you believe and what you like to do, but are opposites in your beliefs and hobbies too, you know? You're the same but opposite." My friend would probably then either start looking around for a hidden camera or send me off to loony bin. Okay, carrying on...
"On matters of race, liberals seem to like the fact that Obama no longer lectures so much about pathologies endemic in black communities, but now focuses on institutionalized bias, as if he is tired of scripted talk about the preservation of the family, the need for education, and the avoidance of illegitimacy and drug use. It is far easier to reduce all that down to institutional racism and legacy unfairness, much as Trump waves his hands about the next complex issue - trade, China, immigration, veterans' affairs - and tells his audiences that a distant 'they' and 'them' are the problem. The respective bases both love the message that someone else did it to us."
Seriously, you want to compare Donald Trump, who has recently come under fire for racist commentary at the expense of Latinos, on the issue of race, to the first African-American president in our country's history, who has had more racist jokes, rumors (myths), and chain emails spread about him than all our other presidents combined, as racists wanted more to see the president as an "other" (you know, "they" or "them")? I'll pretend you didn't write this asinine paragraph and move on to the next one. You're welcome...
"The media rightly notice Trump's first-person - I, me, my, mine - overload, but that too is Obama's favorite kind of pronoun. The president often refers to his 'team' in narcissistic terms, as if the West Wing were a sort of Trump Tower. It is said that Trump is tasteless and gets into tit-for-tat squabbles or tosses out gross quips that are unpresidential. One wonders when Trump will make jokes about the Special Olympics, or about siccing lethal drones one the world-be suitors of his daughters. In any case, Trump handled NBC's Katy Tur in the same manner in which Obama dispensed with CBS's Major Garrett."
Ooh! Busted! Do Obama and Trump have the same favorite adjectives? Prepositions? Conjunctions? Actually, John Templon of BuzzFeed News conducted a study on presidents' usage of first-person singular pronouns (over 2,000 presidential news conferences since 1929 were observed), and shocking to say, President Obama only used these terms 2.5% of the time. This ranks him third from the bottom on the list, ahead of only Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, while behind all of the following: John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Dwight Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush, and Harry Truman. Have anything else for me to debunk, Mr. Hanson?
"Trump was blasted for editorializing on the tragedy of Kate Steinle's murder at the hands of a seven-time felon and five-time-deported illegal alien. But that habit of seeking political resonance in individual tragedies bears the Obama imprimatur. Although the Steinle tragedy did not offer Obama the correct political calculus, he has sought to channel Ferguson, Baltimore, and mass school shootings as fuel for his own political agenda. So far Trump has not quite descended to the level of the president's use of a racial affinity with Trayvon Martin, although his quip about prisoners of war like John McCain being less than heroic comes close."
So, let me get this straight, President Obama, in trying to find the rationale behind police officers' controversial actions, the protests and riots that followed, and why certain individuals would (or could) commit mass shootings, and attempting to find solutions to make such occurrences less frequent in the future is equivalent to Donald Trump referring to an entire demographic as drug dealers and rapists and claiming that a POW isn't a real war hero? Yeah, okay, so when we're attacked by terrorists and try to find the reasoning behind it and ways to decrease the odds of it happening again in the future, that would be the same as Donald Trump labeling African-Americans as "lazy," "thuggish," and "druggies"? Apples and oranges, buddy... Apples and oranges... Next...
"More importantly, like Trump, Obama does not worry over inconsistency or bombast, and has no hesitation about insisting on things that not only are not, but perhaps could not be, true. Obamacare would, Obama assured the nation, lower premiums and deductibles, reduce the deficit, and allow Americans to keep their current doctors and plans, but in fact it did no such things. Obama repeatedly warned his supporters that our immigration law was unquestioned settled law, duly enacted by Congress, and that no president could unilaterally override it - a strange Freudian foretelling of exactly what the president would soon do. Reset with Russia was the proper corrective to George W. Bush's alienation of Vladimir Putin - only it was not, and instead ensured new levels of Russian-American alienation. The post-Saddam Iraq was a great achievement; the country was now secure and self-reliant enough for American troops to leave - and then it just wasn't, after we skedaddled. How exactly did the 'jayvee' ISIS team punch above its weight as the varsity? 'Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now,' That was six years ago, and Guantanamo is still in business."
What was the name of this article? "Obama and Trump: Two of a Kind"? Then how can Mr. Hanson make a fair comparison in this paragraph when Trump's name is mentioned once in the span of 193 words (at the very beginning) and the rest appears to be a Rush Limbaugh-like hit-piece on the president? Mr. Hanson may want to go back to school to take a beginner's course on comparisons. Please tell me this sad excuse for an article is almost finished, Mr. Hanson...
"Talks with Iran were originally supposed to have been predicated on anywhere, anytime inspections, no enrichment within Iran, real-time snap-back sanctions, and tough protocols about weapons purchases and subsidies for terrorists - until they really were not. Red lines were game changers, only they weren't - and they weren't even Obama's own red lines, but the U.N.'s Chlorine gas did not count as a WMD: it wasn't really a weaponized chemical agent at all. Trump's inconsistencies so far are no more dramatic."
At this point, it sounds to me like the alcohol is finally catching up to Mr. Hanson and he's officially in mumbling-mode. After reading this article, I may need a drink myself. Moving on...
"Trump understandably envisions world leaders and foreign policy itself as World Presidents' Organization meetings of business pros like himself, who horse-trade to win their own constituents the better deal. Wheeler-dealers like Trump, we are to believe, are thus the most successful occupants of the Oval Office, especially when energized by savvy and innate charisma. The problem supposedly with our foreign policy is that bureaucrats and diplomats were never negotiators and dealers, and so got taken to the cleaners by far more clever and conniving foreign operators."
...and the mumbling mumbo jumbo continues. I may need that drink now...
"But again, is Obama so different a spirit? He feels that his own winning charm and community-organizing skills can succeed with revolutionary leaders, in a way the political skills of a George W. Bush never could. Relations with Turkey hinged on a 'special friendship' with Erdogan. Apparently, Obama felt that neo-Ottomanism, anti-Israel rhetoric, and increasing Islamization were mere proof of inevitable revolutionary turmoil, a good thing, but one that could be capitalized on only by someone like himself, who long ago was properly ideologically prepped. Ditto Obama's mythography of the Cairo speech before an audience that, on the White House's insistence, included members of the Muslim Brotherhood, or his outreach to Cuba and Iran (note his past silence about the 2009 green demonstrations in Iran). So if Obama has won over the world's one-time pariahs, maybe Trump can try the same first-person methodologies to coax the more business-minded prime ministers to our side. The self-absorbed idea of Trump outfoxing a Chinese kleptocrat is similar to that of Obama hypnotizing an Iranian theocrat."
So the comparison here is how Mr. Hanson interprets President Obama's behavior to how he could potentially see Donald Trump's behavior in similar situations if he's elected? Like the rest of this article, he's stretching things just a bit much, isn't he? I'm starting to wonder if this article was the result of some kind of bet. Continuing on...
"Donald Trump believes he can oversell America abroad in the manner of Chamber of Commerce boosterism; isn't that the twin to Obama underselling the country in the fashion of a wrinkled-browned academic? Both are stern moralists: America is too often shorted, and so Trump is angry over the sins of omission. For Obama, past genocide, racism, and imperialism vie as sins of U.S. commission."
Here's the opposite doppelganger logic again...
Person A: "You're poor just like me!"
Person B: "But you're rich!"
Person A: "I know, so we're the same!"
Alright, next...
"Would a Trump bragging tour be all that much different from an Obama apology tour? If, in politically incorrect style, it is implied that all immigrants are likely to be criminals, is that any sloppier or more politically motivated than the politically correct assumption that all are dreamers? Threatening to charge Mexico per illegal immigrant seems about as sensible as leaving the border wide open and nullifying existing immigration law."
This is black-and-white thinking right here, with the false dilemma informal fallacy written all over it. Also, Mr. Hanson really needs to let go of his opposite-doppelgangers point. It makes absolutely no sense. "Is bragging different than apologizing?" Um, yes. "Is assuming immigrants are all criminals any different than believing they're all dreamers?" Again, yes.
Scenario #1: A classroom discussion
Professor Jezebel Holowitz: "Okay, who here can give me an example of bragging?"
Tony Ravioli: "I am the best! I am the greatest! I can beat everyone at everything!"
Professor Holowitz: "Thank you, Tony. I believe I've heard you say that before. Now, would someone please stand up and give me an example of apologizing?"
Angela Fillmore: "I'm like so so so sorry. I was wrong; you were right. Please forgive me..."
Professor Holowitz: "That was very good as well, Angela. Thank you. Now, raise your hand if you think that what Tony and Angela just did was the same thing..."
Scenario #2: Questioning at a police station
Officer Joseph Rough: "I'm going to be honest, I don't think you're guilty. I don't think you're here illegally. I believe you're a dreamer and deserve to be in this country. Please help convince me I'm right..."
Officer Jorge Sensitivo: "Don't listen to that guy! He's full of crap! You know what you are to me? You're an illegal! You don't belong here! Not only that, but you're a drug dealer, a rapist, and should be behind bars for the rest of your days! What do you have to say about that?"
No, there's no difference at all... Here's how Victor Davis Hanson closed out his "piece":
"There is no need to elect Donald Trump; we've already had six years of him."
That's right, because as Victor Davis Hanson so eloquently states, "Barack Obama and Donald Trump are like doppelgangers, twins, only the opposite of that." Well, I best be going. I'm now on a mission to find my opposite doppelganger, Meryl Streep. We both have at least one "r" and one "e" in our last names. There are five letters in both of our first names. She's an actress; I'm a writer. I'm a male last I checked; she's a female. We're separated by over 30 years. When I see her, it's just like looking into a mirror, well, I mean, the opposite of that.
Yeah, it's like I said, this has to be the most ridiculous article I've read this year, if not my entire life. So, congratulations for the honor, Victor Davis Hanson! Maybe you can attempt to outdo yourself on the ridiculous scale by writing this next article in the coming days or weeks: "Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger Actually Are Identical Twins." Best of luck on that! Now get to work!
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421403/obamas-inner-trump
http://www.nationalreview.com/author/victor-davis-hanson
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/every-presidents-executive-actions-in-one-chart/
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/celebrity?s=t
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/doppelganger?s=t
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=15355
Not being the biggest fan of National Review and having not been too familiar with Victor Davis Hanson's previous work, I thought I'd research a few of his other articles. Judging by some of his other work, perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised by how ridiculous this article was. Here's a snippet of Mr. Hanson's other articles:
- "Progressive Elites Ignore Human Nature at Everyone Else's Expense" (yes, he's subtle)
- "The Four Horsemen of a Looming Apocalypse" (subtlety, take two)
- "Progressive Mass Hysteria" (projection, anyone?)
- "Sexism and Racism Are Leftism" (yes, progressives fight for women's reproductive rights and equal pay because we're obviously sexist, and we fight for police reform (against police brutality), prison reform (discriminatory drug laws), and equal opportunity because we're obviously racist)
- "Let's Talk about Obama's Blatantly Anti-Semitic Associates" (may we borrow a Linda Blair eye-rolling stunt double during this discussion?)
- "Tom Cotton, Tragic Hero" (treason now equals heroism, eh?)
- "At the White House, There's Nobody Home" (he never lets his biases show, does he?)
- "The Audacity of Weakness" (more like the audacity of thinking first before sending 4,500 soldiers to die and spending trillions of dollars in the process based on a false pretense, right?)
- "The Party of Snobbish Elites" (I'm going to need to borrow that Linda Blair stunt double again)
- "Meet the Snobocrats" (Meet the Republi-cons. See?!? I can do that too! Go me!)
So, going back to the article we'll be taking a more in-depth look at, "Obama and Trump: Two of a Kind," Victor Davis Hanson starts with this:
"Outwardly they couldn't be more different. But take a closer look."
:: zooms in on the side-by-side picture of the two of them :: Sorry, I'm still not seeing any similarities, but I'll play along. Please continue...
"President Obama is said to feel liberated, in the sense that he can finally say what, and do as, he pleases - without much worry any more over political ramifications, including presidential and congressional elections. Obama's lame-duck presidency has now devolved into the progressive bully pulpit that his base always longed for. Of course, his editorializing and executive orders may worry Hillary Clinton - much as Donald Trump's pronouncements do his more circumspect Republican rivals."
Let me try to understand Mr. Hanson's thinking here... The Supreme Court ruling in favor of keeping the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in tact, of expanding gay marriage rights nationwide, and of President Obama applauding those decisions, this somehow means his presidency has "devolved into a progressive bully pulpit"? Give me a break... Oh, and about those executive orders, President Obama has averaged 33.6 per year in office, fewer than the following Republican presidents: George W. Bush (36.4 per year), George H.W. Bush (41.5 per year), and Ronald Reagan (47.6 per year). So, nice try... What else do you have?
"Trump is a celebrity who tweets and phones his praise of and insults to comedians, athletes, and media kingpins. But so does Obama love the celebrity world. He is comfortable with Jay Z and Beyonce, picks the Sweet Sixteen on live television, and has reminded us that he's the LeBron of the Teleprompter, who won't choke under the spotlights. Both see pop culture and the presidency as a fitting together perfectly."
This "celebrity" criticism by conservatives cracks me up (as well as the teleprompter remarks). As the saying goes, times, they are a-changing. Not only are there local news networks, there are 24-hour cable "news" networks, talk radio shows, and more politically-oriented "news" sites than Sesame Street's Count von Count would even care to tally. It'd be virtually impossible for a modern-day president to not be labeled as a celebrity. Heck, even before all of this expanded technology, try to tell me with a straight face that a president wasn't a "celebrity." What's the definition of a celebrity? "A famous or well-known person." The time this country's president isn't well-known inside this county is the time we should start to worry. Oh, and speaking of celebrities and teleprompters, the so-called God of the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, was an actor! With Mr. Hanson's logic, Obama would have been just like Trump if he were to befriend Reagan back in the day while he was acting. Okay, next...
"Would the Chicago community-organizing cadre be that much different from the Trump Manhattan clique? Isn't big-city know-how key to 'fundamentally transforming' the country? Is there that much difference between Trump's golden name tags and Obama' faux Greek columns, vero possumus, 'We are the ones we have been waiting for,' and cooling the planet and lowering the seas?"
Notice how he begins this paragraph: "Would the Chicago community-organizing cadre be that much different from the Trump Manhattan clique?" In other words, he doesn't know, so let's skip past the unknowable BS from this paragraph and move on to the next one, shall we?
"Would not Trump perhaps agree with this Obama assertion from 2008: 'I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director.' Both men seem to believe that the presidency is dependent on ratings, something like The Apprentice: 'If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition."
I don't know. Why don't you just ask him, instead of speculating on what you obviously have no idea about? Once again, Mr. Hanson begins his sentence showcasing this very fact: "Would not Trump perhaps agree with this Obama assertion from 2008..."? "Would he...perhaps...maybe...sort of...you know...kind of...like...yeah...?" Yes, that's persuasion at its finest right there! Moving on...
"In his current unbridled commentary and without worry over party politics, Obama has perhaps gone the full Trump - though in the opposite fashion of tossing out politically correct themes of the progressive Left, which lead to little concrete action. So Obama is Trump's doppelganger. The two see the world in similarly materialist - though, again, opposite - terms: Trump wants net worth to be the litmus test of political preparation ('The point is that you can't be too greedy'), even as Obama professes that big money is a Romney-like 1 percent disqualification. Obama's infamous communalistic quotes to the effect that you didn't build that, at some point you've made enough money, and this is no time to profit are just bookends to Trump's money-is-everything ideas that he built everything, he's never going to make enough money, and it is always time to profit."
This has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've read in a while. Let's define doppelganger: "A ghostly double or counterpart of a living being." What Mr. Hanson essentially said was, "President Obama and Donald Trump are doppelgangers, like twins, just opposites." Imagine if I tried setting up a blind date with that kind of thinking? "So, I really think you'd like this guy. The two of you are like twins in what you believe and what you like to do, but are opposites in your beliefs and hobbies too, you know? You're the same but opposite." My friend would probably then either start looking around for a hidden camera or send me off to loony bin. Okay, carrying on...
"On matters of race, liberals seem to like the fact that Obama no longer lectures so much about pathologies endemic in black communities, but now focuses on institutionalized bias, as if he is tired of scripted talk about the preservation of the family, the need for education, and the avoidance of illegitimacy and drug use. It is far easier to reduce all that down to institutional racism and legacy unfairness, much as Trump waves his hands about the next complex issue - trade, China, immigration, veterans' affairs - and tells his audiences that a distant 'they' and 'them' are the problem. The respective bases both love the message that someone else did it to us."
Seriously, you want to compare Donald Trump, who has recently come under fire for racist commentary at the expense of Latinos, on the issue of race, to the first African-American president in our country's history, who has had more racist jokes, rumors (myths), and chain emails spread about him than all our other presidents combined, as racists wanted more to see the president as an "other" (you know, "they" or "them")? I'll pretend you didn't write this asinine paragraph and move on to the next one. You're welcome...
"The media rightly notice Trump's first-person - I, me, my, mine - overload, but that too is Obama's favorite kind of pronoun. The president often refers to his 'team' in narcissistic terms, as if the West Wing were a sort of Trump Tower. It is said that Trump is tasteless and gets into tit-for-tat squabbles or tosses out gross quips that are unpresidential. One wonders when Trump will make jokes about the Special Olympics, or about siccing lethal drones one the world-be suitors of his daughters. In any case, Trump handled NBC's Katy Tur in the same manner in which Obama dispensed with CBS's Major Garrett."
Ooh! Busted! Do Obama and Trump have the same favorite adjectives? Prepositions? Conjunctions? Actually, John Templon of BuzzFeed News conducted a study on presidents' usage of first-person singular pronouns (over 2,000 presidential news conferences since 1929 were observed), and shocking to say, President Obama only used these terms 2.5% of the time. This ranks him third from the bottom on the list, ahead of only Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, while behind all of the following: John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Dwight Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush, and Harry Truman. Have anything else for me to debunk, Mr. Hanson?
"Trump was blasted for editorializing on the tragedy of Kate Steinle's murder at the hands of a seven-time felon and five-time-deported illegal alien. But that habit of seeking political resonance in individual tragedies bears the Obama imprimatur. Although the Steinle tragedy did not offer Obama the correct political calculus, he has sought to channel Ferguson, Baltimore, and mass school shootings as fuel for his own political agenda. So far Trump has not quite descended to the level of the president's use of a racial affinity with Trayvon Martin, although his quip about prisoners of war like John McCain being less than heroic comes close."
So, let me get this straight, President Obama, in trying to find the rationale behind police officers' controversial actions, the protests and riots that followed, and why certain individuals would (or could) commit mass shootings, and attempting to find solutions to make such occurrences less frequent in the future is equivalent to Donald Trump referring to an entire demographic as drug dealers and rapists and claiming that a POW isn't a real war hero? Yeah, okay, so when we're attacked by terrorists and try to find the reasoning behind it and ways to decrease the odds of it happening again in the future, that would be the same as Donald Trump labeling African-Americans as "lazy," "thuggish," and "druggies"? Apples and oranges, buddy... Apples and oranges... Next...
"More importantly, like Trump, Obama does not worry over inconsistency or bombast, and has no hesitation about insisting on things that not only are not, but perhaps could not be, true. Obamacare would, Obama assured the nation, lower premiums and deductibles, reduce the deficit, and allow Americans to keep their current doctors and plans, but in fact it did no such things. Obama repeatedly warned his supporters that our immigration law was unquestioned settled law, duly enacted by Congress, and that no president could unilaterally override it - a strange Freudian foretelling of exactly what the president would soon do. Reset with Russia was the proper corrective to George W. Bush's alienation of Vladimir Putin - only it was not, and instead ensured new levels of Russian-American alienation. The post-Saddam Iraq was a great achievement; the country was now secure and self-reliant enough for American troops to leave - and then it just wasn't, after we skedaddled. How exactly did the 'jayvee' ISIS team punch above its weight as the varsity? 'Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now,' That was six years ago, and Guantanamo is still in business."
What was the name of this article? "Obama and Trump: Two of a Kind"? Then how can Mr. Hanson make a fair comparison in this paragraph when Trump's name is mentioned once in the span of 193 words (at the very beginning) and the rest appears to be a Rush Limbaugh-like hit-piece on the president? Mr. Hanson may want to go back to school to take a beginner's course on comparisons. Please tell me this sad excuse for an article is almost finished, Mr. Hanson...
"Talks with Iran were originally supposed to have been predicated on anywhere, anytime inspections, no enrichment within Iran, real-time snap-back sanctions, and tough protocols about weapons purchases and subsidies for terrorists - until they really were not. Red lines were game changers, only they weren't - and they weren't even Obama's own red lines, but the U.N.'s Chlorine gas did not count as a WMD: it wasn't really a weaponized chemical agent at all. Trump's inconsistencies so far are no more dramatic."
At this point, it sounds to me like the alcohol is finally catching up to Mr. Hanson and he's officially in mumbling-mode. After reading this article, I may need a drink myself. Moving on...
"Trump understandably envisions world leaders and foreign policy itself as World Presidents' Organization meetings of business pros like himself, who horse-trade to win their own constituents the better deal. Wheeler-dealers like Trump, we are to believe, are thus the most successful occupants of the Oval Office, especially when energized by savvy and innate charisma. The problem supposedly with our foreign policy is that bureaucrats and diplomats were never negotiators and dealers, and so got taken to the cleaners by far more clever and conniving foreign operators."
...and the mumbling mumbo jumbo continues. I may need that drink now...
"But again, is Obama so different a spirit? He feels that his own winning charm and community-organizing skills can succeed with revolutionary leaders, in a way the political skills of a George W. Bush never could. Relations with Turkey hinged on a 'special friendship' with Erdogan. Apparently, Obama felt that neo-Ottomanism, anti-Israel rhetoric, and increasing Islamization were mere proof of inevitable revolutionary turmoil, a good thing, but one that could be capitalized on only by someone like himself, who long ago was properly ideologically prepped. Ditto Obama's mythography of the Cairo speech before an audience that, on the White House's insistence, included members of the Muslim Brotherhood, or his outreach to Cuba and Iran (note his past silence about the 2009 green demonstrations in Iran). So if Obama has won over the world's one-time pariahs, maybe Trump can try the same first-person methodologies to coax the more business-minded prime ministers to our side. The self-absorbed idea of Trump outfoxing a Chinese kleptocrat is similar to that of Obama hypnotizing an Iranian theocrat."
So the comparison here is how Mr. Hanson interprets President Obama's behavior to how he could potentially see Donald Trump's behavior in similar situations if he's elected? Like the rest of this article, he's stretching things just a bit much, isn't he? I'm starting to wonder if this article was the result of some kind of bet. Continuing on...
"Donald Trump believes he can oversell America abroad in the manner of Chamber of Commerce boosterism; isn't that the twin to Obama underselling the country in the fashion of a wrinkled-browned academic? Both are stern moralists: America is too often shorted, and so Trump is angry over the sins of omission. For Obama, past genocide, racism, and imperialism vie as sins of U.S. commission."
Here's the opposite doppelganger logic again...
Person A: "You're poor just like me!"
Person B: "But you're rich!"
Person A: "I know, so we're the same!"
Alright, next...
"Would a Trump bragging tour be all that much different from an Obama apology tour? If, in politically incorrect style, it is implied that all immigrants are likely to be criminals, is that any sloppier or more politically motivated than the politically correct assumption that all are dreamers? Threatening to charge Mexico per illegal immigrant seems about as sensible as leaving the border wide open and nullifying existing immigration law."
This is black-and-white thinking right here, with the false dilemma informal fallacy written all over it. Also, Mr. Hanson really needs to let go of his opposite-doppelgangers point. It makes absolutely no sense. "Is bragging different than apologizing?" Um, yes. "Is assuming immigrants are all criminals any different than believing they're all dreamers?" Again, yes.
Scenario #1: A classroom discussion
Professor Jezebel Holowitz: "Okay, who here can give me an example of bragging?"
Tony Ravioli: "I am the best! I am the greatest! I can beat everyone at everything!"
Professor Holowitz: "Thank you, Tony. I believe I've heard you say that before. Now, would someone please stand up and give me an example of apologizing?"
Angela Fillmore: "I'm like so so so sorry. I was wrong; you were right. Please forgive me..."
Professor Holowitz: "That was very good as well, Angela. Thank you. Now, raise your hand if you think that what Tony and Angela just did was the same thing..."
Scenario #2: Questioning at a police station
Officer Joseph Rough: "I'm going to be honest, I don't think you're guilty. I don't think you're here illegally. I believe you're a dreamer and deserve to be in this country. Please help convince me I'm right..."
Officer Jorge Sensitivo: "Don't listen to that guy! He's full of crap! You know what you are to me? You're an illegal! You don't belong here! Not only that, but you're a drug dealer, a rapist, and should be behind bars for the rest of your days! What do you have to say about that?"
No, there's no difference at all... Here's how Victor Davis Hanson closed out his "piece":
"There is no need to elect Donald Trump; we've already had six years of him."
That's right, because as Victor Davis Hanson so eloquently states, "Barack Obama and Donald Trump are like doppelgangers, twins, only the opposite of that." Well, I best be going. I'm now on a mission to find my opposite doppelganger, Meryl Streep. We both have at least one "r" and one "e" in our last names. There are five letters in both of our first names. She's an actress; I'm a writer. I'm a male last I checked; she's a female. We're separated by over 30 years. When I see her, it's just like looking into a mirror, well, I mean, the opposite of that.
Yeah, it's like I said, this has to be the most ridiculous article I've read this year, if not my entire life. So, congratulations for the honor, Victor Davis Hanson! Maybe you can attempt to outdo yourself on the ridiculous scale by writing this next article in the coming days or weeks: "Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger Actually Are Identical Twins." Best of luck on that! Now get to work!
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421403/obamas-inner-trump
http://www.nationalreview.com/author/victor-davis-hanson
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/every-presidents-executive-actions-in-one-chart/
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/celebrity?s=t
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/doppelganger?s=t
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=15355
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