{"id":1260,"date":"2018-10-22T09:57:35","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T13:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=1260"},"modified":"2018-10-22T11:03:08","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T15:03:08","slug":"winner-take-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2018\/10\/22\/winner-take-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Winner Take All"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Winner Take All<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>A battle that you win cancels any other bad actions of yours. In the same way, by losing one, all the good things worked by you before become vain. <\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Niccolo Machiavelli<\/em><\/p>\n<p>President Trump was interviewed by Leslie Stahl of CBS\u2019s <em>Sixty Minutes <\/em>the other night.\u00a0 One of the questions she asked, was how the President justified mimicking the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford.\u00a0 Ford testified that as a teenager, she was sexually attacked by Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh.<\/p>\n<p><em>Stahl:\u00a0 And you\u00a0mimicked Professor Blasey Ford. \u00a0You mimicked her.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>President Donald Trump: Had I not made that speech,\u00a0we would not have won. \u00a0I was just saying she didn&#8217;t seem to know anything.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The telling point:\u00a0 had\u00a0 \u201cI\u201d (Trump) not done that, we would not have won.\u00a0 To the President, it\u2019s all about \u201cwinning and losing.\u201d\u00a0 Trump believes that his actions opened the way for Republicans in the Senate, and in general, to attack Ford\u2019s testimony.\u00a0 It allowed them to deny her \u201ctruth\u201d as a victim, and opened the way for others to arrive at the contorted logic of Senator Susan Collins; that while she believed Ford was a victim, she didn\u2019t believe Kavanaugh was the attacker.\u00a0 Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court: the outcome is \u201ceverything.\u201d What happens along the way is simply \u201ccollateral damage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He applies this same logic to the fate of Jamal Khashsoggi at the hands of the Saudi government.\u00a0 Regardless of who\u2019s at fault for the torture, death and dismemberment of Khashsoggi, \u201cwinning and losing\u201d is about defense sales to the Kingdom.<\/p>\n<p><em>Trump:\u00a0 \u00a0I tell you what I don&#8217;t wanna do. Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, all these com&#8211; I don&#8217;t wanna hurt jobs. I don&#8217;t wanna lose an order like that. There are other ways of&#8211; punishing, to use a word that&#8217;s a pretty harsh word, but it&#8217;s true.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Winning:\u00a0 it\u2019s about the deal Trump made with the Saudis.\u00a0 It\u2019s about money.\u00a0 It really doesn&#8217;t \u00a0have much to do with morality, the focus is on tangible cash.\u00a0 Winning is the central image of the \u201cTrump Brand,\u201d and the central goal of the Trump Administration.<\/p>\n<p>Of course this has been the trajectory of the Trump Administration since it first began:\u00a0burning all bridges as he came down the golden escalator in Trump Tower, calling Mexicans drug dealers and rapists.\u00a0Trump found a sympathetic rhythm with some of the electorate; worn thin by changing mores and political correctness.\u00a0The common morality:\u00a0 respecting others, not calling people names, not intentionally lying; these were no longer important, at least to those who found common cause with him.<\/p>\n<p>It is the basis for the opposition outrage, beyond what many felt for even Ronald Reagan when he was first elected.\u00a0 Trump, daily, challenges the rules of behavior we hold in common, and \u201cgets away with it.\u201d\u00a0 Put that in contrast with President Barack Obama, known for his calm, cool, and empathetic actions, and the extremes exacerbate the situation.\u00a0 The \u201cResistance\u201d not only disagrees with his policies, but they see the man himself as a profanation of what the President of the United States should be.<\/p>\n<p>From a political perspective, does Trump\u2019s behavior represent a \u201csea-change\u201d in American politics, or is it just an aberration restricted to only him?\u00a0 Democrat Michael Avenatti demands that the Party fights \u201cfire with fire,\u201d willing to use the same concepts of morality to combat him.\u00a0 He claims that Democrats are \u201ctoo nice\u201d and \u201ctoo bound by rules.\u201d\u00a0 Other Democratic leaders, Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder, have said similar things.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with that, is it requires Democrats to accept the \u201cends\u201d as well as the \u201cmeans.\u201d\u00a0 For many Democrats, steeped in the liberal tradition of empathy and civil liberties; using those \u201cmeans\u201d to achieve anything, is in itself an unacceptable \u201cend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To Trump, it\u2019s all about winning, at whatever the cost.\u00a0 President Trump proposed another tax cut last night, and called on Congress to pass them before the mid-terms.\u00a0 He knows Congress is in recess until after the mid-terms, but it doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 He threatens to send the military to the border to stop a \u201ccaravan\u201d of migrants coming north from Central America, even though that would violate the law.\u00a0 He says he will protect Medicare and Social Security, even as his Party\u2019s majority leader plots to cut them.<\/p>\n<p>It energizes his base, and undermines another pillar of the foundation of truth.\u00a0 But if he can \u201cwin\u201d on November 6<sup>th<\/sup>, then it doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 The modern father of politics, Machiavelli said it best:\u00a0 <em>A battle that you win cancels any other bad actions of yours.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But Democrats can take some heart in the second part Machiavelli\u2019s phrase: <em>\u00a0by losing one, all the good things worked by you before become vain. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>We can only vote \u2013 and hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Winner Take All A battle that you win cancels any other bad actions of yours. In the same way, by losing one, all the good things worked by you before become vain. Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2018\/10\/22\/winner-take-all\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Winner Take All&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Winner Take All : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2018\/10\/22\/winner-take-all\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Winner Take All : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Winner Take All A battle that you win cancels any other bad actions of yours. 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