Donald Trump in Twitter’s Lilliput
Only the president can lose his election, and thereby ensure socialism for his supporters in the fall. And he can lose only by descending into the Twitter swamp and playing a gullible Gulliver to be tied down and lacerated by clever but six-inch tall Lilliputians.
By Victor Davis Hanson • May 31, 2020
“However, in my thoughts I could not sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals, who durst venture to mount and walk on my body.”
—Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Donald Trump has slumped badly in the polls over the last weeks. There are the usual suspects for his periodic dips: his cul de sac Twitter wars over Joe Biden, obsessing over the utter dreariness of Joe Scarborough’s past irrelevant life, the constant effects of a 93 percent negative media that blames him for everything from the economic collapse to the rioting in Minneapolis, and public frustration of nearly three months of enervating COVID-19 quarantines.
Yet despite the terrible news, the odd thing is that when Trump relaxes and allows even a bleak news cycle to play out, then his policies weather well and usually help him—regardless of the 24/7 negative media editorialization
Given the doom and gloom, few appreciate that beneath the bleak media veneer, there are some signs of growing optimism. The stock market is recovering on hunches that a vaccine is on the horizon and antiviral drugs may soon be appearing. Viral deaths are falling due to the synergy of warmer weather, a likely constantly mutating and attenuating virus, some growing herd immunities, more outdoor activity, and better hygiene and medical protocols.
Democrat and Expert Pessimists Fall Short
Expert pessimists who warned of millions of dead, of never-ending infection, of no vaccine in sight, of 3-4 per 100 of the infected dying of the virus were not just wrong, but wrong to the degree that the entire national quarantine may itself have been a tragic overreaction.
The restart states so far have not experienced the predicted viral disasters, and are slowly showing the way back to recovery. Large blue states like New York, California, and Illinois are increasingly in untenable positions. One cannot critique restart states as near treasonous when they alone are creating real wealth that can be redistributed to subsidize the blue-states’ own fetal-position edicts.
__Governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, California’s Gavin Newsom, and Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker sound panicked, shrill, and incoherent.__The tabs for their pre-viral, suicidal spending have come due. They increasingly are exposed as politically cynical in hoping to slow down the economic recovery to abort the Trump reelection, on the rationale that the United States will never fully recover, with over 20 percent of its national GDP rendered all but inert in these three states. The governors’ “never let a pandemic go to waste” logic is that prior to COVID-19 they lavished their population with big pensions, big welfare payments, and big entitlements, and now demand the federal government take money away from rebooted states to pay for their profligacy—or else.
Joe Biden is, well, Joe Biden. He can neither speak extemporaneously nor on the teleprompter without embarrassment. In an age of #MeToo, he should not be left unattended in a room with women of any age, but particularly should be forced to socially distance at least six feet from teens and preadolescents. Biden may be dappled, pale, and hoarse, but otherwise, his remarkably agile septuagenarian fingers can morph on autopilot into opportunistic tentacles.
https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/31/donald-trump-in-twitters-lilliput/