The Lost Willingness to Accurately Read Between the Lines: a Look at the Anonymous White House Official

The establishments are going gaga over an anonymous New York Times editorial by a senior White House official. But where are the smoking guns? The author states "many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations." But the author doesn't list one specific example. Does Trump drown puppies? Does Trump ship plutonium to North Korea?

In short, the official basically implies that Trump's brand of neoconservatism somewhat differs from the establishment's brand of neoconservatism, a great scandal in establishment circles. "The root of the problem is the president’s amorality." If so, then that implies neoconservatism is amoral.

"Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people." Get real. Neoconservatives don't support freedoms, except the freedom to purge fact facers, the freedom to commit billions of evils of omission, the freedom to rig markets for the well-connected, the freedom to create police states, the freedom to create mutually destructive wars--the "bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more."

"President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations." So merely engaging in diplomacy with dictatorships indicates a "preference for" dictatorships, unlike other neoconservatives who subjugate us to totalitarian Southeast Asian nations and ideologies while trashing our allies as "surrender monkeys."

"But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective... he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back." No, that's not a reference to George W. Bush and his habitual willingness to pursue whatever the first adviser to reach him tells him, the advisers carefully placed by those best at bribery. Nor is it a reference to every other president for over half a century, though it should be.

"There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans." Uh, the ethical reason for having a government is to put the people and other conscious beings first, not the country. The anonymous author acts as if we should be blind to the fact that elites have a long history of "reaching across the aisle" to screw the people over.

"Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making." Every argument I have seen with the phrase first principles attempts to makes virtues out of vices. Establishment first principles are garbage principles.

This is what Trump gets. He surrounds himself with neoconservatives and supports most of their policies, then acts surprised and outraged when they keep stabbing him (and far more importantly us) in the back.

Meanwhile, Trump has never even so much as met with a single supporter of White freedom and self-determination.