Well over half a century ago, I became a Bobby Fischer fan. He was asked at age 14 what he loved about chess. He answered: "I love to see them squirm."
Today, I love to see the mainstream media squirm about Trump.
In response to the Orlando massacres by a Muslim terrorist, President Obama went before the cameras and gave his predictable lecture about terrorism with no adjective -- "Islamic" -- or its other adjective: "radical."
President Obama never uses the I-word in conjunction with terrorism.
Trump went for the jugular before -- not after -- the speech. He tweeted:
"Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!"
Trump has his number.
I'll tell you what else he has: his finger on the pulse of swing-vote Americans.
Trump's tweet sent a pair of CNN journalists into rage -- a rage of political impotence. Here, I analyze their tirade.
It began with what these out-of-touch liberals thought was a rhetorical question: "Does it matter if Obama uses the term 'Islamic terrorism'?" Yes, it does. And I'll tell you where it matters: in the election of 2016.
As millions of Americans processed the news that a terror attack had left 50 people dead at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Donald Trump reignited a political debate."Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!" Trump tweeted moments before President Barack Obama addressed the nation from the White House. He doubled down on those comments in a statement later Sunday that also called on Hillary Clinton to toughen her tone on terror.
As expected, Obama did not utter the words "radical" or "Islam," instead referring to the attack as "an act of terror and an act of hate." Indeed, he has resisted using the term "radical Islam" throughout his presidency despite pressure from Republicans.
Though investigators had yet to officially conclude that the Orlando assailant was inspired by radical Islamic ideology, Sunday's tragedy returns questions over the importance of such terminology to the center of American politics.
Here's a look at why "radical Islam" and "radical Islamic terrorism" are such loaded terms and the arguments for and against using them.
Politics is mostly about knee-jerk reactions. Here are knee-jerk reactions regarding the Orlando massacre:
1. Obama-Clinton's refusal to use "Islamic" with "terrorism"
2. Trump's refusal not to do so
3. The liberal media's pretense that nothing fundamental is at stake
Here is reality: in politics, rhetoric is huge. Positioning is huge. Symbols are huge. Knee-jerk reactions are huge. These things determine political outcomes.
Arcane expositions by mainstream journalists are not huge. But this is all these people have.
They ask a question in large print:
Why do Donald Trump and other Republicans say using the term "radical Islamic terrorism" is so important?
I answer:
1. Because it is not a question of Baptist, Hindu, Buddhist, or Catholic terrorism
2. Because swing voters understand this
3. Because they have had enough -- more than enough -- verbal waffling
4. Because they associate verbal waffling with cowardice and impotence
Our journalists continue:
Trump and other Republicans have hewed the same line: If you don't name your enemy, you can't defeat it.
That is bad grammar, but it is an accurate assessment. If you cannot name an enemy, you cannot defeat it. Worse: you will never know if you have defeated it. So, the war goes on forever.
This is ideal for the military-industrial complex.
We know when World War II ended: when Germany and Japan surrendered.
We also knew when the Vietnam War ended: when the government that we sent 58,000 men to die for surrendered.
That's how wars end: defeat or victory.
Let me mention the Big One: Islam vs. Christianity in Spain. That war began in 711 when Islam invaded. It ended in 1492, when the last Muslim city surrendered.
Are we clear?
Trump explained his outrage at Obama's refusal to use the term at a campaign rally this spring: "Unless you're going to talk about it, you're not going to solve the damn problem folks. You're not going to solve it."Trump and other Republicans have argued that the Obama administration fails to understand the enemy -- a key component of which, they argue, is the radical Islamic ideology that is fueling terrorist attacks in the Middle East and increasingly in the West.
Trump understands rhetoric. Obama and Clinton do not.
May I remind our intrepid journalists: Reagan understood rhetoric. Clinton and Mondale -- Grits and Fritz -- did not. Mondale lost twice: once as the VP candidate, once as the Presidential candidate.
Rhetoric matters in politics. But these two outraged journalists want to pretend that it doesn't.
Do experts back up this reasoning?
What they mean is this:
Do obscure liberal think tank bureaucrats back up this reasoning?
It turns out that they do not. (Actually only one person is quoted.) Somehow, I am not surprised.
So why are Obama and Hillary Clinton so vigorously opposed to this language?
Because they are establishment liberals who want above all to believe that (1) radical Islam is not committed to wiping out Western democracy by violence, and (2) radical Islam is going away soon.
This outlook goes back to a very stupid book written by an intelligent man: The End of History (1988). The author wised up and stopped writing drivel. Yet he had made his reputation with the drivel. His establishment readers did not make the transition with him (e.g., Trust).
There is a war on. Obama/Clinton think it's mostly peripheral -- nothing compared to income from Goldman Sachs-funded speeches. His will begin in 2017. Hers have ended until 2017, if she loses.
"We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam," Obama said during remarks at a summit on combating violent extremism in February. "These terrorists are desperate for legitimacy. And all of us have a responsibility to refute the notion that groups like ISIL somehow represent Islam, because that is a falsehood that embraces the terrorist narrative."
Then why did the President of the United States decide to invade Iraq, a politically secular nation at the time? That was how ISIS inherited the mess we left behind?
Clinton voted for the invasion of Iraq.
Obama refuses to pull the troops out of Afghanistan.
Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has defended her refusal to use the term along similar lines."That sounds like we are declaring war against a religion," Clinton said in an interview with ABC News in December.
So, she leaves out the I-word and its modifier.
Voters are waiting for someone to use the I-word and its modifier. Trump is the only politician willing to do so. That's because he is only a recent politician.
But our intrepid journalists do not want to admit to their readers or themselves that this is the situation.
Do experts back up this line of thinking?Most terrorism experts believe that labeling terror attacks as radical Islamic terrorism is either detrimental to efforts to combat them or simply not strategically important to defeating terrorist groups like ISIS and their ideology.
I have three words in response: blah, blah, blah.
Clinton evades. She bloviates. She was asked directly on the Today show by Savanah Guthrie about what Clinton would do about Islamic attacks. Clinton went on and on about the need to feel sorry for the victims, on how we should not politicize this. Guthrie responded that it will be politicized. Clinton bloviated some more.
She cannot give a straight answer.
Swing voters want straight answers. The answers need not be plausible, but they had better be straight.
Trump does not bloviate. He tweets.
"Me, Too!"
Hillary Tweets, too. At 10:32 A.M. on Monday, she tweeted this:
Inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric hurts the vast majority of Muslims who love freedom and hate terror. It's wrong, and it's dangerous.
Before the day was over, she flip-flopped. Now she says she is happy -- her word -- to use the phrase, thereby reversing what she has said for six months.
"You know, whether you call it radical jihadism or radical Islamism, I think they mean the same thing, I'm happy to say either," Clinton said Monday in an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo.In December 2015, Clinton defended her decision not to use the term "radical Islam" after the attacks in San Bernardino.
"The problem is that sounds like we're declaring a war against religion," she said during an interview with George Stephanopoulos who asked her about the term. "And that to me is number one, wrong."
"Even though the qualifier radical is there?" asked Stephanopoulos.
"I don't want to do that, because, number one, it doesn't do justice to the vast numbers of Muslims in our own country and around the world who are peaceful people," Clinton said, saying that there are extreme elements in "every religion in the world."
Clinton added that she was worried that the use of the term "radical Islam" helped create a "clash of civilizations" that helped ISIS recruit more Muslims.
She explained in December that she wanted to send a different message to the Muslim community in the United States.
That was then. This is now. Trump called out Obama. Was she going down on that sinking ship? No, sir. By the end of the day, she became Mrs. Verbal Hardline. She adopted a "me, too" position. She thinks that crying out "me, too," hours after Trump called Obama out, is going to help her candidacy. She thinks that imitating John Kerry in 2004 is a sign of strength.
In marketing, adopting a "me, too" position dooms your advertising campaign. This has been known for a generation. She is unaware of it.
CONCLUSION
Articles on the CNN site are politically impotent. But they do let us get inside the mind of the liberal establishment.
The establishment got us into this foreign policy mess. They are unable to get us out.
The establishment offers the voters this: more of the same -- operationally and rhetorically: quagmire. It's quagmire in the mountains, and quagmire in the sand.
Voters get to decide in November.
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