She Reads Cohen So You Don't Have To

Ann Althouse: WaPo's Richard Cohen seems to be asking the right question, according to the headline, "Why people like Trump."

But very little of the column even attempts to tell us why people like Trump. Nearly all of it is about all the things that seemingly should have already made everyone loathe Trump — he said "shithole countries," he probably committed adultery, he failed to show faith in our intelligence community— and the confounding persistence of support for Trump.

A more accurate headline would be a question, "Why do people like Trump?," not what looks like a promise to answer that question. Elite media people like Cohen should finally come around to asking the question humbly, confessing to their abject failure even to admit that they've needed to ask it and rejecting their imperious concentration on telling people what they should think. Look at all these reasons to loathe Trump. Come on, you idiots, you're embarrassing yourselves by not loathing him yet. It hasn't worked, and yet you continue to do it.

Cohen has exactly one sentence that tries to say why people like Trump, and it's incredibly weak:

My guess is that it’s a low-boil rage against a vague and threatening liberalism — urbane, educated, affluent, secular, diverse and sexually tolerant.

Yes, yes, I know. You're so sure you and your friends are the good people. Your unshakeable love for yourself and your friends is glaringly evident, as usual. By the way, if the Trumpsters are raging against the sexually tolerant, why are they they tolerating Trump's sexual behavior?

Because we were told by liberals that a President's affairs in office were no concern of ours.  Certainly, his affairs before he was in office are out of bounds yet. As one commenter: Sebastian said...

"Nearly all of it is about all the things that seemingly should have already made everyone loathe Trump — he said "shithole countries," Which they are, as progs themselves assume when they plead for illegals to be allowed to stay, because sending them back would be cruel. And course, the whole shithole kerfuffle was ginned up by Dick Durbin to screw Trump. Since most of are not Dick Durbin Republicans, our response is : f** that.

"he probably committed adultery" We settled that a generation ago with Billy Jeff. Dems taught us not to care, so we don't. Sure, it would be nice to have gentleman in the White House. We tried that: but Bush was vilified as BusHitler, and uber-gentleman Romney for pulling someone's hair in high school. So f** that.

"he failed to show faith in our intelligence community" You mean, the geniuses and Gus Hall voters who told us all about the WMDs in Iraq, the preparations for 9/11, the "Russian meddling" and so on? The ones who weaponized intelligence to attack an American campaign and a new president? F** them.

"Elite media people like Cohen should finally come around to asking the question humbly, confessing to their abject failure even to admit that they've needed to ask it and rejecting their imperious concentration on telling people what think." They should, shouldn't they. Nice thought. But they don't do humble. Imperiousness is progressivism's MO. They do know better, you know. They are the Anointed. F** them.

"Cohen has exactly one sentence that tries to say why people like Trump, and it's incredibly weak: My guess is that it’s a low-boil rage against a vague and threatening liberalism — urbane, educated, affluent, secular, diverse and sexually tolerant." Ah yes, the deplorables "rage"--not Antifa, not the Women's March, not James Hodgkinson, not John Brennan, but the flyover yahoos threatened by "vague" liberalism, vague in the way it mandates mandates, imposes SSM edicts, goes after energy companies, takes over the MSM and the higher ed, and so on, and so forth. F** that.

"Yes, yes, I know. You're so sure you and your friends are the good people. Your unshakeable love for yourself and your friends is glaringly evident, as usual. By the way, if the Trumpsters are raging against the sexually tolerant, why are they they tolerating Trump's sexual behavior?" Althouse is right, of course. WaPo should ask her to write a column.

"With the groundwork of that one lazy sentence, Cohen leaps to: "It is, in other words, some of the same sentiment that once fueled European fascism."" Ah, yes, we're fascists. "Some of the same sentiment," after all. But wait: Which side has the antisemites? Which side wants to increase state control of the economy? Which side wants government to have more power? Which side wants to transvalue bourgeois values? Even their smears are inane. F** them.

"To give WaPo readers some credit, maybe they, like me, saw the headline and believed that someone at the newspaper was finally going to get serious and go deep in trying to understand how people really think and feel in the America that lies beyond the Northeast." Huh? How many believed that? How many wanted that?

It's amazing how the authors at WaPo and, I presume, the NYT and all the other liberal rags compete to bash Trump, and his voters. This one is just another resort to the "deplorables" label, in slightly fancier language.

This is how you get more Trump.