Insights of a tragic figure

Conrad Black is an interesting and somewhat mysterious man. I have never been able to resolve whether he actually committed financial crimes as alleged or was the vicious target of the establishment. He was clearly overcharged and it seemed as if the judicial system was simply throwing as much at him as they could in order to find anything that might stick.

Criminal, unlikely. Unethical, possibly. Tragic, certainly.

But a man of insight and talent and experience and ambition. And a man who knows what it is like to fight the establishment mob and political dicta.

From The Kidman Doctrine Trumps George Will As John Bolton Rises by Conrad Black.

It is distressing to see my friend of nearly 40 years, George Will, writing such words of frenzied despair about the president and his national-security adviser-designate, John Bolton. It is also worrisome to see my cordial acquaintance of 20 years, Richard Haass, writing as mournfully as he did last week of the end of the Liberal World Order.

One expects, a year into an administration that went to war in the election campaign against the entire political class in both parties and among the national press (such as George Will) and the foreign-policy establishment (and Richard Haass is one of the best of them), that there will be panic below decks. One hears it every day from Joe Scarborough and Wolf Blitzer and their legions of screeching sound-alikes.

But George Will and Richard Haass are eminent men, flag officers on this ship. That George Will has a cultural and temperamental problem with Donald Trump is no surprise, and neither is Richard Haass’s concern that the Western Alliance is crumbling (though that, if true, has more to do with the Alliance-deaf previous two administrations and the flabby complacency of most of America’s so-called allies).

[snip]

Whether or not George or others agree with it, the president has done his best to enact the program the voters approved when they elected him. He has appointed judges who believe they should carry out the law and not the current political reinterpretation of what that great paragon of modern liberal jurisprudence Eliot Spitzer described as “a flexible constitution.”

Mr. Trump has drastically reduced illegal immigration, reformed and reduced taxes, deregulated, stimulated economic growth, succeeded in gaining China’s serious cooperation in dissuading North Korea from gaining a nuclear first-strike capacity, and armed the Ukrainians with anti-tank weapons and committed to providing Eastern Europe with anti-missile defenses.

[snip]

With a more suave individual enacting the same policies, George Will would, on past form, be an appreciative supporter; it is dismaying that such a substantive person and eminent commentator and old friend is unable to distinguish often annoying (though usually rather entertaining and even refreshing) Trump flimflam and posturing from the substance accomplished by an administration that has, despite the continuing war with most of the political class, had the most successful first year of any newly elected administration since Eisenhower’s, if not Franklin D. Roosevelt’s.

[snip]

Mr. Trump isn’t the problem, but among the symptoms of the problem are that the director and deputy director of the FBI have been fired for cause as the Bureau virtually became the dirty-tricks arm of the Democratic National Committee, and that, as the Center for Media Studies and Pew Research have both recorded, 90% of national-press comment on Mr. Trump is hostile. Mr. Trump may have aggravated some of the current nastiness, but his chief offense has been breaking ranks with the bipartisan coalition that produced the only period of absolute and relative decline in American history.

If Mr. Trump succeeds, the abrasions he sometimes causes will be worth enduring. I commend to my hand-wringing friends the wisdom of dual citizen (Australian and American) Nicole Kidman, who advised her Hollywood peers to have some respect for the elected president and some understanding that if he does well, the country does well. These are almost the only sensible words that have been heard from Hollywood since Ronald Reagan left there for Washington in 1980 (to have dinner at George Will’s house).

Black notes several insights that I see occasionally but not often given their due. I have added some observations of my own.

Trump theatrics are different from his intents and are undertaken to achieve an outcome. There is method to his madness. Successful or not, the outcomes are not simply the product of luck.

The outcomes he seeks are not materially inconsistent with past stated policies of either/both establishment parties.

The difference is that Trump seems serious about achieving those outcomes and uninterested in charades and appearances. He is after what works rather than the establishment approach of pursuing what looks good.

The outcomes he seeks are more aligned with the interests of the electorate than they are with the establishment.

Polarization between the parties is far less of an issue than the war between the establishment parties and the interloper.

We clearly have an institutional independence and integrity issue that needs rectification (the FBI, NSA, and CIA as political actors casting their backing to either establishment party in pursuit of their own interests).

The establishment political class does not object to the goals or even especially the means. They object to being displaced and made redundant.

The mainstream media may be primarily aligned with the Democrats but more fundamentally, they are also the establishment being displaced and made redundant.

It is not clear that displacing and making the existing power establishment redundant could be achieved with reasoned discourse over inflammatory rhetoric and wily political theater.

The power establishment is far more an issue of class than it is an issue of policy.

The entire power establishment viscerally objects to Trump as an independent outsider who pays no tribute and acknowledges no establishment norms thereby placing the sinecures of the establishment in jeopardy.

It is clear that the entirety of the power establishment has become accustomed to operating outside the rule of law and most objects to the equal application of the law to all citizens.

Or so it seems to me at the moment.