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Accountability ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers Popular responsibility

The Law of Unintended Trump Support

Last week, when President Donald Trump abandoned his previous policy position on getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in favor of continuing the establishment-​supported policy of keeping those troops there, he was very well-​received in our nation’s capital.

NeverTrumper/​neo-​con Sen. Lindsay Graham (R‑S.C.) spoke of Mr. Trump’s “smarts” and “moral courage.” 

The #NeverPraiseTrump Washington Post applauded the president’s valiant “self-​correction.”

Yet when Trump holds a view contrary to the Washington consensus his wisdom and moral bravery elicit less celebration.

Instead, we hear that The Donald is unfit to command.

“I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office,” says James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence.

“The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability,” Sen. Bob Corker (R‑Tenn.) concurred, “that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.”

And from the usual suspect list of television talking heads we get clinical diagnoses, talk of “erratic behavior and mental instability that place the country in grave danger.” 

Mr. Trump combines every bad personality trait imaginable, the litany runs.

But all this is for nought.

Donald Trump has been able to withstand media negativity as well as the lack of support from his own party’s insiders for one simple reason: it validates him. 

Every insider attack, every media-​fueled outrage campaign, just proves him as the ultimate outsider to a system that the long-​frustrated, increasingly angered electorate wants turned upside down.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*This episode of Common Sense condenses my regular weekend remarks at Townhall.


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ideological culture

A Sweltering Storm of Orthodoxy

Can we agree to tolerate disagreement?

Swedish climatologist Lennart Bengtsson’s “defection” from an alleged climatological consensus has been greeted with hysteria from some colleagues. His sin was joining the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which challenges the received wisdom.

The alleged scientific consensus is that mankind, in its industrial phase, is not only a cause but the pivotal cause of recent global warming/“climate change.” Also that our carbonic effusions are triggering not mild, normal, nothing-​to-​panic-​about global climate variation but imminently catastrophic variation.

Is it okay to dispute these and related hypotheses?

Debate about complex scientific contentions isn’t a bad thing. New knowledge is gained both by positive investigation and by correcting errors and misinterpretations. One does not abet scientific inquiry by treating any challenges to a favored explanation as per se illicit, regardless of evidence or argument.

But Bengtsson reports that he has been subjected to enormous pressure “from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me … I see therefore no other way out … than resigning from GWPF. I had not been expecting such an enormous world-​wide pressure … from a community that I have been close to all my active life.”

What’s the message? “Regardless of your reasons or credentials, don’t dare deviate from our ‘consensus,’ at least not publicly — or else we’ll make your life very very hard.” Whatever the motives and goals here, they have nothing to do with either the methodological or the social requirements of science.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.