Althouse: "Above all, his willingness to disregard political correctness makes the supporters feel he’s saying exactly what they really feel about issues..."

November 3, 2016

"Above all, his willingness to disregard political correctness makes the supporters feel he’s saying exactly what they really feel about issues..."

"... but they’re afraid to say it in public. In a way, he represents their hopes, fears and frustrations... Isn’t he the kind of person we need desperately in Ghanaian politics right now?"

Wrote Kwaku Adu-Gyamfi, a Ghanaian columnist, quoted in "Trump’s tone resonates in strongman-weary Africa."

I know. Some of you are going to say, if Africans like Trump maybe it's because he is a strongman. People who are weary of the strongman may nevertheless think the solution is another strongman. Here's Trevor Noah's take:

48 comments:

Dave D said...: This is the kind of lazy, biased/slanted, selective comedy that drove me away from this show in its previous incarnation. SNL is getting that way also.; 11/3/16, 10:43 AM
MayBee said...: I remember when the Democrat's post-Iraq argument was that Iraq and the ME need strongmen to run them.
It's the left that are fans of strong men.

I mean, who is the one obviously comfortable smearing her opponent as committing treason in his election bid? Isn't that what a strong man would do?; 11/3/16, 10:44 AM
Unknown said...: the dems started this by nominating Obama. so the country got our African strongman. people on facebook are honestly calling for another 4 years of Obama--and want to repeal the 22nd amendment. I would love to reverse this course and just elect presidents who care about the rule of law but dems then nominated Hillary. dems will always nominate the strongman because they promise and deliver for dems. see, e.g. Obama.

so they only answer is to reverse with a populist strongman. seems on point; 11/3/16, 10:45 AM
mccullough said...: Trump is a comedian not a strong man.; 11/3/16, 10:45 AM
Quaestor said...: Trevor who?; 11/3/16, 10:46 AM
rhhardin said...: If you can't say what you notice, you're voiceless.

The oppressing force is soap opera women, a weird bunch to be intimidated by.

Trump isn't intimidated either. Notice what we have to notice and fix it, for a change.; 11/3/16, 10:46 AM
rhhardin said...: Maybe it's the monthly cycle. Women complexify instead of advancing because they're caught in a cycle, and go instead for filling it out in interesting ways. Guys abstract to advance.

It does all seriously start at puberty.

Trump should bring it up.; 11/3/16, 10:49 AM
n.n said...: If a strongwoman took us into the twilight zone. It seems appropriate that a strongman would lead our exodus. Equal and complementary, I suppose.; 11/3/16, 10:53 AM
zipity said...: Libya and Egypt were unavailable for comment...; 11/3/16, 10:54 AM
Anonymous said...: Yes,strongmen always submit themselves to punishing primaries and national elections.; 11/3/16, 10:57 AM
Siduri said...: My daughter is now 17 and likely has Asperger's syndrome. She could type her alphabet when she was 18 months old, and she read her first word before she could communicate with people without just repeating what she heard on television. So, likely, she was also experiencing what some call hyperlexia.

I was utterly unfamiliar with any of these concepts until she was older. I just assumed there was something wrong with me as a parent. She was also our first child, so we didn't know what "normal" was like.

It's taken her a long time to look anyone in the eye and smile. She thankfully is in a small, rural, private school with loving teachers. She is thriving academically, and her GPA is over 4.0.

Her grandparents, of course, refuse to accept any of this. My mother and sister (who works as an elementary school librarian!) both casually mentioned that she was "demon-possessed."

Four months ago, my mother tried to get me to watch a youtube video of a quack who hypothesized that mini-strokes from vaccines cause autism. My daughter's vaccine record shows that this woman, my mother, was in our home for a week before and after my daughter's vaccines. She obviously saw no signs of some catastrophic event.

Casually suggesting vaccines cause autism is far from funny in my book.; 11/3/16, 11:01 AM
J. Farmer said...: @MayBee:

"I remember when the Democrat's post-Iraq argument was that Iraq and the ME need strongmen to run them."

Not just Democrats were saying it, and they were right. Multinational states tend towards two realities: centralized authoritarian strongmen or ethnic conflict. When you try to build a state on representative democracy in a multinational society is a recipe for disaster. See post-Tito Yugoslavia and post-Hussein Iraq for more recent examples. The expansion of democracy across the globe in the 20th century resulted in a huge amount of bloodshed. Democracy is easily the most overrated political virtue of our times.; 11/3/16, 11:02 AM
dbp said...: I don't really see the connection between being "a strongman" and being anti-PC.

A strongman disregards the rules and traditions to do what he wants. Trump may or may not do this, we cannot tell by his previous use of government power, since he has never held office. We do know that both Obama and Clinton have broken rules, or at least pushed them to the point of 9-0 rulings in the Supreme Court.

Clinton and Obama act or have an affect of convention, but systematically break the rules. Part of the reason they do this is because they can--the press will not hold them to account. Does anybody think the press will ever give Trump a pass, on anything?; 11/3/16, 11:03 AM
Sprezzatura said...: "I mean, who is the one obviously comfortable smearing her opponent as committing treason in his election bid?"

WTF?

Somehow it seems like you've missed DJT's campaign.

Anywho, I've got a HRC-for-prison bobblehead, so it's probably easier for me to keep the jail-HRC theme in mind.; 11/3/16, 11:08 AM
William said...: Anthony Weiner and Jon Stewart used to be roommates. When the very first allegations of Weiner's s sexting were first made by Breitbart, Stewart used his puckish sense of humor to defend Weiner and attack Breitbart. Puck you Stewart......I would love to see SNL or Comedy Central run a skit making fun of all the things they got wrong over the years. A comedy gold mine.........Anyway, comparing Trump to guys like Mugabe and Idi Amin is a welcome change of pace after all those comparisons to Hitler. You don't often hear black comedians making fun of African dictators, but I guess it's ok in the context of making fun of Trump.; 11/3/16, 11:10 AM
traditionalguy said...: Africa likes a strong man to rule them. So what. The strong man in our saga after Ceasar was Willim the Conqueror. He was a Norwegian (Viking) that used Normandy as a base to invade the part of England the Saxons and Romans calling themselves Brittans had not yet surrendered to the Vikings.

And DaTrump's mother came from a Norwegian colonized area of the northern isles of Scotland.

I for one welcome our new Laird's leadership as Lord of the Isles (Manhattan).; 11/3/16, 11:15 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: If Donald Trump can deadlift his own weight then he can save money on insurance.; 11/3/16, 11:17 AM
William said...: Rasputin was an ignorant, superstitious, horn dog lout. He was killed by members of the aristocracy for having undue influence on the Czar. Rasputin actually did not have enough undue influence. Of all the Czar's advisers, he was the only one who told him that going to war would cost Russia her empire and the Czar his head.......They say it's better be lucky than smart. It's also better to be right than smart. Maybe Trump is our Rasputin.; 11/3/16, 11:19 AM
Curious George said...: "Here's Trevor Noah's take"

Here's my take on Trevor Noah's take.; 11/3/16, 11:32 AM
Howard said...: This is the same comparison as the Black Jeopardy bit on SNL with Tom Hanks as the Trumpster. Does this mean that Drumpf will be our third Black President?; 11/3/16, 11:32 AM
Bill Peschel said...: I was going to write something long but dbp nailed it.

We have a strongman in power now, thanks to the GOP's unwillingness to enforce the Constitution. They know that whatever the Dems do, they'll get to do as well. They have no incentive.

The perils of a monopoly is well known, but there's a school of thought that points out a duopoly is just as bad. It's the Pepsi/Coke "wars," where it's easy to negotiate a truce that both can profit from.

This is why we need to loosen the parties' strangleholds on redistricting and elections.; 11/3/16, 11:45 AM
Jaq said...: Meanwhile Hillary is the one approaching billionaire status based on her "public service" Most strong men, like Castro and Saddam? Billionaires. Hillary has a little catching up to do.; 11/3/16, 11:52 AM
Jaq said...: Yes, "Drumpf," that is some solid argument against a lady who violated Federal law by destroying records of meetings as Secretary of State with people who paid her millions of dollars.; 11/3/16, 11:53 AM
n.n said...: "public service"... oil for food. serbia for uranium. syria for oil. libya for arms. ukraine for a russian blackeye. refugee crises for democratic leverage. it's been a progressive slope since south africa for minerals.; 11/3/16, 11:57 AM
Jaq said...: Anywho, I've got a HRC-for-prison bobblehead, so it's probably easier for me to keep the jail-HRC theme in mind. PB&J

So you don't think that violating this law carries a prison sentence?

Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.

Or do you not think Hillary violated this law?

“I’ve never seen anyone put their schedule in the burn bag – because every one of them had a state.gov email address and therefore their daily schedules became public records, as required by law,” Richard Grenell, former diplomat and US spokesman at the United Nations, told the Post.

Experts predict the circumstances surrounding the destroyed records will be intensely scrutinized. The Associated Press has been trying to obtain access to Clinton’s schedule and public and private calendars through Freedom of Information Acts from January 2009 to February 2013, and the wire service sued the State Department for the schedules in 2015.

Huma says otherwise.; 11/3/16, 11:57 AM
Jaq said...: The only think keeping Hillary OUT of prison is her candidacy. We have seen this before, but never in the US.; 11/3/16, 11:59 AM
Jaq said...: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2071; 11/3/16, 12:00 PM
mockturtle said...: makes the supporters he’s saying exactly what they really feel about issues..."
"... but they’re afraid to say it in public. [emphases mine]

Why is everything 'feel'. What ever happened to 'think'?; 11/3/16, 12:01 PM
Birkel said...: So, PB&J, who has administrative control of this blog, are you Althouse or Meade?; 11/3/16, 12:02 PM
Gahrie said...: Why is everything 'feel'. What ever happened to 'think'?

We gave women the vote.; 11/3/16, 12:05 PM
Unknown said...: Russell Kirk pointed out once that the form of the government is not really that important as a conservative populace. I think that is the great error of the US in the last 100 odd years: We grant democracy to people without realizing that the people must be ready for democracy.

Democracies only work when the people govern themselves. The Founding Fathers, if dumped on an island somewhere, would never have needed a formal government at all, because they could govern themselves. And most of the early US could: a very Christian nation, with a strong religious element to the population that the people actually believed in, for the most part.

Now that the left has destroyed religion in America, or at least made it illegal to be taught to children, we see the results: a democracy without the people able to govern themselves. This, by the way, is one reason why same sex marriage is such a terrible idea: it is explicitly legal on the basis that homosexual people are governed solely by instinct and therefore cannot control themselves and must have legal same sex because they cannot control themselves. And you are a bigot for suggesting they can. The entire idea reduces humans to animals, really.

If we could guarantee that the King was always good, then it would be good to be governed by a king. Indeed, if you are Christian, the idea is that God will reign as king over the earth after Christ comes again. We won't have a president or congress or voting. But why would we want to, with God as the king?

--Vance; 11/3/16, 12:10 PM
Sprezzatura said...: Birk,

I am the certified ombudsman.

What'd you expect.; 11/3/16, 12:37 PM
Lyle Smith said...: The strongman argument is so odd. Trump can't even protect his supporters in the streets or cops.; 11/3/16, 12:55 PM
Anonymous said...: dbp: I don't really see the connection between being "a strongman" and being anti-PC.

I think you provide the clue to your own puzzlement:

Clinton and Obama act or have an affect of convention, but systematically break the rules. Part of the reason they do this is because they can--the press will not hold them to account.

Everything turns on "convention". "Strongman", or more commonly, "authoritarian" has been used conventionally for the last half-century to indicate nothing more than legal or social rules or cultural mores which the left doesn't like. Occasionally, its use as a descriptive is coincident with what a disinterested observer might describe as "authoritarian", but usually it isn't used to describe governance that is objectively more coercive or dictatorial than what the left gets up to when it's in power. Persecuting heretics until they recant cannot be "authoritarian" behavior if the inquisitor is a progressive, by definition.

So "anti-PC" is indeed "authoritarian" by their lights, because it indicates a revolt against what the left wants to shove down people's throats, and we all know that not going along with leftist religion down to the last neuron of private mental space is Just How Nazi Germany started, which obviously makes the anti-PC impulse authoritarian, and the suppression of anti-PC obviously anti-authoritarian, because how can being anti-Hitler possibly be an authoritarian impulse?; 11/3/16, 1:40 PM
robother said...: I suspect Africans and other Third Worlders who have been on the receiving end of the Progressive Imperial/Missionary project for a century or more can appreciate the nexus between dictatorship and grandiose globalism better than most voters in American or Europe. Reining in America's Progressive foreign policy (aka Invade the World) would probably ensure peace in Africa, The Middle East or Asia far more than electing Nobel Peace Prize progressives from Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Obama.; 11/3/16, 1:42 PM
dbp said...: Thanks Anglelyne, I wasn't really puzzled. You point to the psycological reason why the left makes logical jumps without even noticing what they are doing. Some do this on purpose and they are a lost cause, for those who do it out of habit, pointing to the jump can make them realize it exists.

The left sees PC as what would commonly be thought of as politeness. Conservatives see PC as authoritarian in that it seeks to win leftist arguments by making any language opposed to their set beliefs, illegitimate. We can only win by relentlessly pushing back and reclaiming the meaning of words.; 11/3/16, 2:21 PM
JaimeRoberto said...: Trump is to an African strongman what Hillary is to Evita Peron.; 11/3/16, 2:41 PM
cubanbob said...: Trevor's problem isn't that Trump is a strongman but as an African he resents that Trump is the strongman of the dominant tribe and he isn't of that tribe.; 11/3/16, 2:47 PM
mandrewa said...: I really enjoyed this episode of the Daily Show. I laughed a lot,
and I felt a huge sense of relief.

The reason I felt a sense of relief is that it became clear
to me that Donald Trump very likely isn't dangerous. I've been
avoiding watching Trump just as I tend to avoid watching politicians
in general because I tend to find politicians disappointing
if not downright irritating. And this is especially true of
those that I have to vote for.

Look if Trump wins the presidency, liberals will suddenly
discover they like Constitution and in fact have always
liked the Constitution, and in particular they will like
all the parts that strive to prevent an imperial presidency.

Now I know they'll reverse position as soon as they have
the presidency again, but still this issue all by itself,
as its consequences unfold, may delay the future decline and
fall of America by at least a year or two.

Look if Trump is really sincere in some of his crazier ideas,
he will be blocked by the Democrats, he will be blocked the
Republicans, he will be blocked by the media, and some of
the centralization of power that has occurred in my lifetime to
the presidency will be undone.

There may be a struggle but I'm sure this is what would
happen in the end and actually the greater the struggle that
is demanded the larger the move away from an imperial presidency.

It's only Trump's more mainstream ideas, the ones he can persuade
a majority of Republicans to support, that have a chance to
really happen.

The other possibility is that this is actually tongue-in-cheek,
and that Trump is engaging in kind of humor and self-mockery
that is going to escape many. I think there's a good chance
this is what is actually going on.

If so that ironically makes him more potentially powerful than
if he were sincere, but then again, having a president that
knows how to mock himself, might be interesting.; 11/3/16, 4:23 PM
Fandor said...: Who is Trevor Noah?
Is this another of Mia's children sired by Sinatra? Or Trevor Howard? Or Noah?
There is someone else named "Whoopi" who weighs in on politics.
Who could ever take someone with a name like Whoppi seriously?; 11/3/16, 4:26 PM
Jupiter said...: Trevor Noah is living proof that there are worse things you can do with a Y chromosome than pajama boy. I'm beginning to think modern feminists have a point after all. If someone expected me to mate with the likes of those two smarmy little maggots ...; 11/3/16, 7:13 PM
bagoh20 said...: I thought The Daily Show was a comedy. Where's the funny?; 11/3/16, 7:23 PM
rcocean said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 11/3/16, 7:27 PM
rcocean said...: "I thought The Daily Show was a comedy. Where's the funny?"

Its an unfunny comedy show. That's the joke.

For non-Leftists.; 11/3/16, 7:28 PM
mandrewa said...: As I think more about this, there's a great deal of irony in the Trevor Noah
skit.

The left wants to make knowing these sorts of things about Africa a
thought-crime. Indeed on some university campuses it already is. I suspect
by simply talking about this sort of thing, this actually rather common
behavior in Africa, would be considered heresy at many universities and could
quite easily get someone fired or expelled.

Barack Obama and the left tell us that there are too many white people in
America. In the last few years I seem to be seeing people from Africa
everywhere, and I mean recent immigrants.

There is in fact a huge migration going on.

The United Nations tells us that anyone objecting to that immigration is evil.

Any suggestion that we were are also importing the culture of Africa or the implication that there is something wrong with that culture will soon be a thought-crime.

The Daily Show has just violated the unwritten rules. Most of the time that would be enough to get the show cancelled. But it's all okay if it's part of an attack on Donald Trump of course.

If you enjoy this sort of humor (you know laughing about the real world) well enjoy it, because in a few months it will be something that cannot be said or known.; 11/4/16, 12:41 AM
Achilles said...: The Daily Show has never really been funny. It is short clips removed from context with quirked eyebrows and a smirk. It is gas lighting without the manual dexterity to use a lighter. People who think it is funny are stupid.; 11/4/16, 12:42 AM
Bad Lieutenant said...: If watching this guy was homework, I would fail that class. Joyfully, with a song in my heart.; 11/4/16, 6:08 AM
mikee said...: Trevor Howard, like Maureen Dowd, caters to a select audience that grows ever smaller.

I, for one, grew up watching Monty Python and thus know how to make fun of the powerful using humor. You do it not by catering to the false beliefs of your small, core audience, but by making them think through self-contradicting behaviors and thoughts presented by persons put in unusual situations.

Thus, Hillary as US President will be the funniest several years of news broadcasts in world history, as newscasters are required to present bald faced lies of ever more incredibly unbelievable sorts, to keep her in office.; 11/4/16, 9:58 AM