Category: Instapundit

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I try not to talk about Donald Trump too much. It is a nearly impossible task as he is president of the United States and is always inserting himself into everything. So I apologize for yet another Donald Trump post and, after some consideration this more about Donald Trump’s apologists who, instead of trying to right Trump’s direction, just go along with him come Hell or high water.

I took a photo (see below)of an Instapundit post because Instapundit doesn’t provide a direct link to their post so this was the only way I could figure out how to get you the post in question without you paging through the whole blog which would leave you disheartened from the slavish loyalty to Donald Trump. It is a dirty job and I am willing to do it.

Trumps threat in this post, although a bit tamer than the one where he wants to bomb Iran back to the stone age one, is about annihilating a whole country. Instapundit’s defense is to point out that the Islamic aspect of Iranian civilization is actually a colonist civilization and is separate from actual Persian civilization. So, I am gathering, destroying Iran now is perfectly OK because it is Islamic and not in fact Persian.

Well OK thanks. I guess but that has nothing to do with the point Piers Morgan was making. Trump is talking about destroying an entire civilization because they won’t do what he wants. Maybe Trump has a less deadly idea of what destroying a civilization is but my interpretation is that all the Iranian people would be dead along with all buildings and all infrastructure. There would just be a pile of rubble after the Tuesday deadline. This is what Trump is threatening. The distinction between Islamic and Persian here is meaningless. Islamic rubble and Persian rubble are pretty much the same thing. Rubble.

Trump’s tone and Instapundit’s unwavering support are unhelpful in bringing about peace for the following reasons:

  1. The US does not have the fire power to flatten Iran. It would take nuclear bombs to accomplish total destruction and, call me naive, I am assuming nuclear is off the table. We could maybe level the center city of a few major cities but the rest of Iran would still be standing. Threatening annihilation is an idle threat and everybody knows it.
  2. It is also nearly impossible, at least in the short term, to destroy a civilization. Both Japan and Germany recovered quite nicely after World War II which was the last time we experimented with total annihilation. There were a lot of dead people and burned out buildings but both nations recovered. So, even, if the worst were to happen (see point 1) the Iranian people and their civilization will survive. The hated Iranian government might even survive.
  3. It does not help that Trump at numerous times have told us that the Iranian military and the nuclear capability has been destroyed while also threatening to destroy Iranian military capabilities. Sometimes even in the same statement. Which begs the question, what is left to destroy?
  4. The snarkiness about Muslim culture might feel good in the moment but keep in mind we are depending on some Muslim allies in the region for bases in which to wage the Iranian war. They are already taking missiles for us, they may feel a little less inclined to assist if they think we are antagonistic to Islam.
  5. If Trump wants to help the Iranian people, he might try to co-ordinate his war making with Iranian critics in Iran. He may be doing that but his tone suggests he is not. What reasonable Iranian ally would want to see the total destruction of their civilization?

Trump’s go to tone is the aggressive attacking of his opponents and then when you are done attacking them, go back and attack them again. It has worked well for him in the past but is wrong for this moment. He might even consider just keeping his trap shut for a few days just to see if people are more amenable to what he is trying to do. It is worth a try.

And, if he can’t see his way into keeping his trap shut, this is the time for his allies and supporters to tell him to do so. They are failing miserably in their responsibility here. Pissing off half the nation and our allies is a terrible strategy for winning a war. But, hey ho, at least I learned the difference between Muslim Iranian culture and Persian culture. Very helpful that.

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I keep up with Conservative thinking just to make sure I know what exactly is going on in their fevered minds. On the other hand, keeping up didn’t mean I wanted to spend too much time exploring their murky depths. I decided to pick one website and to read that website religiously. I can’t recall exactly why but I choose Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit site. I wasn’t disappointed. Reynolds is easy to read and links to a wide variety of Conservative and Libertarians writers that range from the slightly unbalanced to the completely wacko. He was clearly connected to Conservative and Libertarian thinking so I felt a wise choice in my pulse taking endeavor.

Instapundit also serves as an alternate to a cup of coffee in the morning. Every day Reynolds and company serve up some tidbit that will spark my rage. Yesterday I was jolted awake when I read Reynolds discussion with David Bernstein regarding race classification. Bernstein believes that the present racial classifications are dated, arbitrary and eventually going to be meaningless with the increasing popularity of intermarriage between the races. He claims that in the not so distant future 80% of all Americans will have some minority status that will qualify them for minority business enterprise designation. Because of this racial mixing, racial classifications will cease to have any meaning, much less any use.

To a point, I agree. What percentage of racial makeup makes someone black? Does one grandparent make one Black or must someone have four grandparents one Black? What if you have significant black heritage but your pigmentation is white — can you still be called black? If you have to wade through a your gene pool to determine your race, what is the point of racial classification?

The future sure sounds great. The problem is we aren’t quite there yet. People still use racial classifications because people still see race. I googled Black incarceration statistics and quickly found an example. Eugene Volokh wrote in Reason about the difference in incarceration rates between Blacks and Whites. Volokh says Blacks commit more crimes than Whites which explains why they are jailed more than whites. Well, then, how is Volokh defining race? Is it anyone with any black heritage? Is it one, two, three or four grandparents? Or is it someone who has black pigmentation? Or is the person self-reporting? You can’t say racial classifications are meaningless when people still use them when discussing issues like crime and poverty because Racial classification definitely mean something to Volokh. More importantly, his audience understands what he means when he uses racial classifications. Are Reynolds and Bernstein suggesting eliminating racial classifications when discussing crime and poverty? Would elimination of these classifications help us to understand the best way to address these issues?

The problem here is that, while making progress, Americans still see racial differences. Maybe 50 years from now Black and White won’t mean anything. Right now they have a powerful meaning. It isn’t as if Blacks created the distinctions. Whites did. First to distinguish slave from master and then to know when to practice discrimination. To suddenly say these are now meaningless lets White history off the hook. Discrimination is illegal now so racial classifications no longer have a purpose. To White conservatives maybe, but not so for Blacks.

Racism didn’t end with the passage of Civil Rights Legislation in 1960’s although many Conservatives like to think it did. It still lingers on and has an effect of Black people’s lives now. Slavery happened. Discrimination happened. Lynchings happened. Blacks, the largest minority group for the most of American history, suffered horribly . In didn’t happen in quite the same way to the Irish or to the Italians or to the Japanese or to the Pakistanis. These other groups undoubtedly experienced difficulties but they don’t compare to the crucible that Blacks endured. So until people stop seeing race, how do you measure racial discrimination? People will need to see that things are getting better with data, how would you prove your point?