How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Donald?

I bow to no man in my ability to say "what the f--k!', which is pretty much what Republicans have decided to do this election so far.  But I haven't decided to chuck it all yet, not with Hillary as the Dem candidate. The base responds, "we patiently offered moderates like McCain and Romney and look what it got us? So we just don't care anymore."

There's irony in how the reason for the dismay over the establishment is due to unfulfilled promises, given that Trump has upped the ante by making promises close to the level of "if I'm elected, I'll turn water into wine!"

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I'm transfixed that an Orthodox priest I know here in Columbus is supporting Trump and spoke before 15,000 people at a recent Trump rally. Pretty interesting to see a man of the cloth so into politics, and Trumpian politics at that.  "The Other" lives. People are complicated. It seems a cult of personality. People seem very susceptible to that, witness Pope Francis's popularity.

Jeb Bush said the Donald is a great politician and I'm beginning to believe it. One definition of a gifted pol is someone who can get away with stuff no one else could. Bill Clinton won despite a myriad of lies, bimbo eruptions and shady land deals. Obama won despite (what I considered at the time) fatal flaws of  the “cling to God and guns” comment (is that any better than Romney's 47% comment?), as well as the Rev Wright and Bill Ayers connections. And Trump has survived birtherism, flip-flops and a dust-up with Republican powerhouse Fox News. I think it comes down to all three being liked so much. You can't trump likability, no pun intended.

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On the subject of Muslim immigration, I've read of a proposal that gets at the heart of the problem: not religion but a need to vet our values. George W Bush famously went to free Iraq and remake the Middle East in his image -- into a freedom-loving paradise -- and the same problem seems to be present in our immigration policy in which we assume everybody is the same, all cultures equal, and nobody really wants Sharia law except for a few terrorists.

It's hard to get any sort of impartial narrative on something like Muslim immigration. People on the right are subject to prejudice. People on the left are subject to debilitating liberal guilt. So it's hard to get purchase on it.

One real-life experiment: Lewiston, Maine, a 99% white town until Somali immigrants came in huge waves beginning in 2001.

I found an article on Huffington Post that suggested this was the model for the country of beautiful integration and multiculturalism. While Ann Coulter pointed to increased crime and how the mayor said back in 2002 “no more, please! We can't take any more Somalis”.

So what's the truth?

The mayor did say that and has since retired.

Crime rate hasn't gone up. So in that sense the statistics, impartially, don't bear out the complaints of some whites there. Of course since second generation Muslims tend to be a bigger problem, so it's still way early.

A white, Republican anti-welfare mayor of the town just won a third term despite the place being mostly Democratic. This speaks louder than words: for all the pretend peacefulness, there's a whole lot of white Democrat voters there who are crossing the aisle because they like what they're hearing on the other side. Mostly they are sick, it seems, of Somalis gaming the welfare state. Is this a prejudice? Who knows, but it sure suggests ain't everything all hunky-dory.

Then I looked at the Minneapolis Somalis.  Nicht gut. The best intentions lead to Hell. A lot of Somalis were brought here by Lutheran Social Service back in the 90s and now even NPR has a piece about ISIS recruitment in Minneapolis. Our own little hotbed of potential extremism, which "has legs" since extremists generally come in the second generation of immigrants, not first.  Is it fair to laden our grandchildren not only with crushing debt but jihadists? Even Angela Merkel, no Donald Trump, says multiculturalism is a sham and a lie.

At war within me: safety versus generosity. It seems zero-sum. Taking in refugees is a noble and generous thing. I think of how life is not the greatest value, that God is, and that God chose love over life (in the short run). The Second Person of the Trinity was a migrant from Heaven, a migrant into a death-dealing world as vicious - at least to Jesus - as Yemen or Syria. And yet he chose to mingle with us.

I was musing on this as my grandson was lulling me to sleep with his cuddling next to me on the recliner, him watching YouTube videos of superheroes and me reading about one of my superheros, St. Francis, and in particular how he dealt with the Muslim Sultan when he famously ambled through the DMZ during one crusade talked to the Islamic chieftain. While history is different it rhymes, and so perhaps the key to the current predicament of how to deal with the Muslim headache can be answered by that saint of yore.

I see two promising books on the subject, one from a conservative side (mentioning immediately Pope John Paul's comment to Mother Teresa, "watch out for the Muslims!") and one from the liberal.  I'll probably end up more confused than ever.  Making it even worse is how the US bishops seem definitely on the liberal end of things.

Pope Francis and Donald Trump

I (like Peggy Noonan) continue to be fascinated by the Trump phenomenon.  I'm beginning to wonder whether there's been an evolution in public communication style.

Note the parallels between Trump andPope Francis.  Both don't care a lick what others think of them. Both feel totally free, unburdened by expectations, feeling they have nothing to lose. Both speak off-the-cuff at great length and give off the vibe of "authenticity" for that reason.  Both speak forcefully of things unpopular to great segments of the audience (while very popular with others). And both often sound bellicose and blunt.  

Of course the similarities quickly fade, since Francis presents humility and Trump presents pride, to start with. But it does say something that both Francis and Trump have struck such a nerve. It's perhaps a natural evolution towards spontaneity, a rebellion against computers. In this age of the computer, we desire most of all non-robots. And Francis and Trump are that.

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From National Review's Jim Geraghty:

Over on the home page, I look at the rush to find societal scapegoats for mass shootings on both the left and the right, and the possibility that this ignores the more proximate issue of individuals’ becoming “grievance collectors.”

There are disturbing ramifications if media discussions are indeed driving us to become a more grievance-minded society. Willard Gaylin, one of the world’s preeminent psychology professors, writes about the dangers of “grievance collecting” in his book Hatred: The Psychological Descent into Violence:

Grievance collecting is a step on the journey to a full-blown paranoid psychosis. A grievance collector will move from the passive assumption of deprivation and low expectancy common to most paranoid personalities to a more aggressive mode. He will not endure passively his deprived state; he will occupy himself with accumulating evidence of his misfortunes and locating the sources. Grievance collectors are distrustful and provocative, convinced that they are always taken advantage of and given less than their fair share. . . .

Underlying this philosophy is an undeviating comparative and competitive view of life. Everything is part of a zero-sum game. Deprivation can be felt in another person’s abundance of good fortune.

At the heart of the grievance collector’s worldview is that he is not responsible for the condition of his life; a vast conspiracy of malevolent individuals and forces is entirely at fault. There is always someone else to blame, and the Virginia shooter quickly finds ways to excuse his actions and deflect the responsibility to others.

A lot of people on the right will read that and say, “Ah-ha! A ‘grievance collector’ is exactly what liberals want people to be! That’s what they’re stirring up with their class warfare, their portrait of a relentlessly racist society, ‘Occupy Wall Street,’ and so on!” Except this is not just a matter of politics, it’s a matter of personal worldview. Nobody can brainwash you into being angry at the world for slights and injustices, real or perceived. Everyone who embraces fury and resentment makes the choice to do so.

Also . . . is this really a phenomenon of the Left? Isn’t it fair to say the right side of the spectrum is more grievance-minded in 2015 than in, say, 1980 or 1988? Perhaps the reasons for anger are more legitimate -- illegal immigration, monstrous activities within Planned Parenthood’s walls, a deal that legitimizes Iran’s nuclear program . . .