The French Deception

Timothy Birdnow

David French, the National Review RINO who so despises Donald Trump and MAGA waxes poetic about the evils of "populism"

From the op-ed:

That is either a lie or French is just plain dumb (to quote a game at Cracker Barrel); there has not been an effort to UNDERSTAND the current populism so much as to find a way to attack it. The Democrats and elitists Republicans STILL believe supporters of Trump are mind-numbed robots, intellectual slaves of a svengali. They don't understand that the reason they support Trump is because Trump supports THEM, cares about what they want and tries to restore an America they knew and loved. It has nothing to do with oratory, or with slick packaging, and everything to do with Trump being genuine, speaking like they do and promoting what they want and at least trying to honor his campaign promises.

French has to know this yet he lies and says there have been efforts to understand MAGA. There have been no efforts to understand it, just ways of trying to find weaknesses to exploit.

He continues:


Yet French provides no real proof  of  this assertion.

In fact he does not provide a definition of populism at all; it means essentially to oppose him and his cronies, nothing more.

There have been multiple, highly successful populist movements in America. The Revolution was one such. (Yes, the elites were heavily involved but the movement had deep roots in populist discontent.) Antislavery was a populist movement. Wommen's suffrage was a populist movement. so was Civil Rights. The Jacksonian era was entirely a populist movement. How was the West settled? It wasn't by scholars and bankers; it was a populist movement.

In point of fact "populism" is sneered as a pejorative but it is, in essence, a democratic movement. It used to be called "people power", the idea that the public should have a say in it's own governance and the country ultimately belongs to the silent majority as Richard Nixon called it, the "great unwashed". What French is supporting is oligarchy, rule by an unelected junta of the intelligentsia. This is as old as Mankind; there have always been intellectual snobs who believed they were superior by birth and upbringing and education and have a divine right to rule. French would be a Loyalist if this were during the Revolution; can't have those rowdy ignorant rubes running things! Only the aristocracy is fit to govern and that means His Majesty!

French continues:


"Populism" in the post Civil War South was a response to reconstruction and French should understand that. The peopleof the South were disenfranchised and had very unpopular policies shoved down their throats by the victorious North. Furthermore, they had carpet-baggers coming in to feast on the carcass of the dead South. You can call it "populism" or you can call it anger against exploitation. But to use the South as an example of populism is dishonest; there were a great many things going on at that time and Southern anger would have been in place even if the antebellum aristocracy had survived. Of course it hadn't, and so was replaced by the low-born - that hardly equates to "populism".

French actually goes on to quote the radical leftist rag The American Prospect as if it were somehow proper source material!

He says:


There is no proof of that first statement. What often happens is there IS passion, but that is the cornerstone of politics and always has been. Nobody charges guns for DEI; they say "remember the Maine" as they charge them. Passion has always been at the root of politics; it's how you get committed workers, how you get people to turn out to vote. The Left has been full of passion for 150 years now. There is nothing wrong with passion, nor is that the hallmark of the ill-defined "populism" of which French is so horrified.

As to the latter statement, this anger came well before the "Great Recession" and many of us have been cheesed off since the first Bush Administration. It's been a long time coming. And it is rooted in bad governmental policies, policies that have embedded themselves in our government adn seem almost impossible to root out. NAFTA, for instance, was not popular but was shoved down America's throats and led to the decline in manufacturing and making things - in favor of a "serive economy" which paid far less and had worse hours and just sucked more. Anger has been mounting against that for a long time. And against this internationalism. We want our incandenscent light bulbs. We want our SUV's - just as we wanted our station wagons before them (which clowns like French took away from us.) We don't want men in women's restrooms, or Pride days, or open borders. We want the America we knew.

French sees that as "passion" and thinks it's terrible; we should shut up and let people like him run things "for our own good". It has become passion, yes,but because it has NOT been for our own good but for the good of the ruling oligarchs and their friends, who have made huge sums of money out of it.

We see the truth; America is walking down the same path as did the Roman Empire. Rome had all our problems, and people who advocated for these same sorts of policies. They had an ever-widening gap between rich and poor. They had the declne of yeoman farmers, with farming moving to North Africa and farmers forfeiting their land to bankers. They had big welfare programs. They had an unsecure border with illegal aliens pouring in, displacing the Roman citizens. They had the decline of the old political order and the empowerment of the Senate and the Emperoro. They had high inflation and high spending and a huge bureaucracy bossing everyone around. Education suffererd and little by little the Romans forgot how to keep their civilization running. When Odoacer seized power and sent the trappings of the Emperor back to Constantinople the empire was dead and nobody really cared because it had stopped being of any value. That is where we are nearly at today in America.

It's not about a bunch of angry, excited hillbillies but about people who rightly see their country slipping away.


Oh? None of us are especially angry right now David! Quite the opposite.

No change happens without passion dude.

So if this is populism, why haven't the Democrats, who are nothing BUT rage and passion, populists? Was Rush Limbaugh a populist? He was frequently angry,but he was also full of good humor as often is Donald J. Trump.

French ignores his own anger and passion. His hatred of Trump oozes out of his every pore. Does that make French a populist?


Uh, Trump didn't say coastal real estate development would solve all the problems there, did he? This is ignoratio elenchi, a straw man fallacy. What French ignores is that nobody has ever even TRIEd any differnt approaches to the Middle East, and we have actually funded both sides for half a century or more. The public is sick of it and wants there to be an honest attempt to solve the problem. Elites like French don't like to solve problems,but to dwell on how hard they are and how smart they are in supporting the process. It's all process to them.

Midwest manufacturing jobs were indeed dropping off prior to NAFTA,but why? Bad government policy created by the same people French is protecting. Democrats climbed in bed with labor unions, who fleeced the industries they were engaged with, for instance. Then companies started outsourcing overseas and the government made that easy. Had the government stayed out of it that wouldn't have happened; the unions would have realized they could not afford to push the companies into bankruptcy. But it wasn't just the unions, excessive regulations from multiple government agencies, OSHA, the EPA, the Department of Energy, etc. drove the cost of manufacturing way up. These were policies fromt he elites. Then when they didn't work the elites outsourced the manufacturing and put countless Americans out of work. You're damned right it didn't start with NaFTA, but it was ALL the fault of big government and the elites who suckle at the boated teat of Auntie Samantha (Uncle sam got a sex change.)

I could continue dissecting French but the point is made; he's a braying jackass who is projecting his own hatred and rage onto his enemies - the American People. I was sore tempted to use the line Joe Pesci made to the jury in My Cousin Vinny "everything that guy said was bullshit...thank you". But since French sees himself as some enlightened rationalist I thought it wise to demolish his pseudo-arguments. The fact is he doesn't have a leg to stand on. He really cannot even define the term populist, so how can he argue about how bad it is? All he can do is spew his own hatred and insecurities.

MAGA isn't just angry, although it is angry because we are seeing our country being stolen from us. But what MAGA wants is accountability and new policies. The elites have ruined the country, and their policies have been horribly destructive and self-serving. Americans are just fed up. French wants us to continue with the same failed approach, like the coach of the Chiefs kept trying the same plays during the last Superbowl and his team was obliterated. That's where America is at now and French and his friends want to double down on the bad play calling. As Einstein said, insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Nice try David! You keep pushing for the same thing over and over!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:46 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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