Electing Donald Trump by no means constitutes a "regime change" or even an attempt at a regime change. A regime change is just that, a change of regime--in other words, converting an oligarchy into a democracy, or a democracy into a monarchy, or (as in Iraq) a tyranny into a democracy. Voting for Donald Trump is, by definition, a continuation of the present democratic regime.
Now, both his supporters and his opponents tend to imagine that the election of Donald Trump might usher in a dramatic shift in U.S. immigration, economic, and foreign policy--but dramatic shifts in each of those areas have occurred repeatedly throughout the history of the United States. Our current policies on these lines are themselves the result of a dramatic shift in U.S. policy in the wake of the Second World War and the ascension of the United States to "superpower" status. So major policy shifts are really nothing to wax apocalyptic about. We could have a lengthy discussion about dramatic policy shifts in U.S. history that make Donald Trump's advocacy of a return to the standard U.S. policies of the pre-World War II era seem relatively tame.
As to the claim that your exaggerated opposition to Donald Trump is emphatically not a register of support for Crooked Hillary and that it is "fallacious" of me to suggest that it is, I'll leave it to those who may be reading along to assess whether or not the logical implication of your overwrought contempt for Donald Trump is that Hillary Clinton ought to be elected President instead. But by the lights of your original piece, whereby advocacy of the notion that the present state of affairs is so degenerate that no plausible alternative could make things worse is a kind of political sin or hamartia--and where your specific example of the hazards of this notion is support for the Iraq War--one is minded (again, by your own piece) to be skeptical of the idea that Hillary would be a wise choice for President.
That support for Donald Trump is only speculatively subject to the terms of your analysis is due to the fact that we don't actually know what the outcome of a Trump presidency would be like. For all we know (as opposed to all we speculate) the Trump presidency might prove to be successful--we just don't know. By contrast, the outcome of the Iraq War is known--it isn't a speculation.
I don’t personally choose to participate in the “well-night universal consensus or groupthink” either on the war decision or on the assumption that the counterfactual, no invasion in ’03, would certainly have produced a “better” outcome.
Well in that case, I'm not even sure what the purpose of your citation of the Iraq War's origination in the sort of thinking that your piece clearly criticizes really amounts to and I think it testifies to a problem that haunts your negative stance regarding Mr. Trump--namely, it's an intense predilection, a passion, frankly an instance of "groupthink", that (at least occasionally) wants to masquerade as a point of sober political analysis.
Am I understanding you aright? We were led into the Iraq War--which, according to a well-nigh universal consensus or groupthink, had a more or less disastrous outcome--by a sense that no possible result of the war could be worse than the status quo ante, and now an analogous argument is being made for the election of Donald Trump (the election of Trump can't eventuate in anything worse than the way things already are)--so we must elect instead one of the major proponents of the aforementioned and notorious Iraq War. We must elect a woman who accepted the argument that the invasion of Iraq couldn't be any worse than the alternative courses of action, due to the hazards of the time--an argument of course that Daniel McCarthy didn't make, but that Hillary did.
Is your argument that Hillary--by virtue of having actually committed the error, having actually made the mistake (of believing the idea that a given state of affairs is so perilous that a worse state of affairs isn't plausibly conceivable), which can only speculatively be imputed to the supporters of Donald Trump--is, like the Ancyent Marinere, a "sadder and a wiser man" and we can count on her to possess the wisdom born of repentance, despite her prior foray into the hubris of not standing "idly by" while dangers gather?
You'll forgive me, but there does seem to be a little something "off" about this line of thought.
Electing Donald Trump by no means constitutes a "regime change" or even an attempt at a regime change. A regime change is just that, a change of regime--in other words, converting an oligarchy into a democracy, or a democracy into a monarchy, or (as in Iraq) a tyranny into a democracy. Voting for Donald Trump is, by definition, a continuation of the present democratic regime.
Now, both his supporters and his opponents tend to imagine that the election of Donald Trump might usher in a dramatic shift in U.S. immigration, economic, and foreign policy--but dramatic shifts in each of those areas have occurred repeatedly throughout the history of the United States. Our current policies on these lines are themselves the result of a dramatic shift in U.S. policy in the wake of the Second World War and the ascension of the United States to "superpower" status. So major policy shifts are really nothing to wax apocalyptic about. We could have a lengthy discussion about dramatic policy shifts in U.S. history that make Donald Trump's advocacy of a return to the standard U.S. policies of the pre-World War II era seem relatively tame.
As to the claim that your exaggerated opposition to Donald Trump is emphatically not a register of support for Crooked Hillary and that it is "fallacious" of me to suggest that it is, I'll leave it to those who may be reading along to assess whether or not the logical implication of your overwrought contempt for Donald Trump is that Hillary Clinton ought to be elected President instead. But by the lights of your original piece, whereby advocacy of the notion that the present state of affairs is so degenerate that no plausible alternative could make things worse is a kind of political sin or hamartia--and where your specific example of the hazards of this notion is support for the Iraq War--one is minded (again, by your own piece) to be skeptical of the idea that Hillary would be a wise choice for President.
That support for Donald Trump is only speculatively subject to the terms of your analysis is due to the fact that we don't actually know what the outcome of a Trump presidency would be like. For all we know (as opposed to all we speculate) the Trump presidency might prove to be successful--we just don't know. By contrast, the outcome of the Iraq War is known--it isn't a speculation.
Well in that case, I'm not even sure what the purpose of your citation of the Iraq War's origination in the sort of thinking that your piece clearly criticizes really amounts to and I think it testifies to a problem that haunts your negative stance regarding Mr. Trump--namely, it's an intense predilection, a passion, frankly an instance of "groupthink", that (at least occasionally) wants to masquerade as a point of sober political analysis.
Am I understanding you aright? We were led into the Iraq War--which, according to a well-nigh universal consensus or groupthink, had a more or less disastrous outcome--by a sense that no possible result of the war could be worse than the status quo ante, and now an analogous argument is being made for the election of Donald Trump (the election of Trump can't eventuate in anything worse than the way things already are)--so we must elect instead one of the major proponents of the aforementioned and notorious Iraq War. We must elect a woman who accepted the argument that the invasion of Iraq couldn't be any worse than the alternative courses of action, due to the hazards of the time--an argument of course that Daniel McCarthy didn't make, but that Hillary did.
Is your argument that Hillary--by virtue of having actually committed the error, having actually made the mistake (of believing the idea that a given state of affairs is so perilous that a worse state of affairs isn't plausibly conceivable), which can only speculatively be imputed to the supporters of Donald Trump--is, like the Ancyent Marinere, a "sadder and a wiser man" and we can count on her to possess the wisdom born of repentance, despite her prior foray into the hubris of not standing "idly by" while dangers gather?
You'll forgive me, but there does seem to be a little something "off" about this line of thought.
Build the Wall - Kill em All