No one was surprised that Vivek Ramaswamy decided to suspend his campaign for the presidency after his poor showing in Iowa. Although he was by far the most rhetorically nimble of the GOP candidates, it had long been clear that this was not his moment. His showing in the Iowa Caucus—he came in a distant fourth with about 7 percent—quantified that truth.
Not that Vivek is going anywhere. He will not be the GOP presidential candidate in 2024. But by immediately suspending his campaign and enthusiastically endorsing Donald Trump after Trump’s stunning, blow-out victory in Iowa, Vivek guaranteed that he would have an important role to play in Trump’s campaign and, should Trump be reelected, in the second Trump administration.
The New York Times did not like that Vivek endorsed Trump. Veteran readers of our former paper of record can already tell from the headline and subhead of the story that reported the news. “Vivek Ramaswamy, Wealthy Political Novice Who Aligned With Trump, Quits Campaign.” “Wealthy,” eh? “Quits,” you say? Beginning rhetoricians should be set the task of rewriting that headline for some progressive plutocrat. Then they should try their hand at rewriting the subhead: “A self-funding entrepreneur, Mr. Ramaswamy peaked in late August but deflated under attack from his rivals. He dropped out after the Iowa caucuses and endorsed Donald J. Trump.”
I think it was a writer for Time magazine who, back in the day, illustrated the point by noting the difference in tone between “Truman slunk from the room to huddle with his cronies” and “Ike strode from the chamber to confer with his advisors.” Truman and Ike were doing the same thing, but the description of their activities cast them in very different rhetorical spaces. The Times obviously had Vivek slated for a Truman-like role.
Consider the first sentence of the story: “Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old entrepreneur and political newcomer who briefly made a splash with brash policy proposals and an outsize sense of confidence, dropped out of the race for the Republican White House nomination after a disappointing fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.” “Newcomer,” “briefly,” “brash,” “outsize,” “disappointing.” You see where this is going.
But the real meat of the story in the Times begins a few paragraphs later.
Mr. Ramaswamy had embraced increasingly apocalyptic conspiracy theories; spoke of a “system” that would block Mr. Trump from office and install a “puppet,” Nikki Haley; called the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol an “inside job” orchestrated by federal law enforcement; and begun trafficking in the racist theory of “replacement” that holds falsely that Democrats are importing immigrants of color to supplant white people.
Question for the class: Is a theory that is “apocalyptic” necessarily untrue? How about a “conspiracy theory?” As I have noted previously, when Calpurnia and the soothsayer warned Julius Caesar about a conspiracy against his life, all they had was a theory. But then came the Ides of March, and the theory turned out to be true.
I assume that the reporter is correct that Vivek used the terms “system” and “puppet” to describe the forces that are marshaling to keep Trump from reassuming office and catapult someone more pliable and favored by the neo-con/deep-state alliance into the top spot instead. But however you want to describe the machinations of the deep state, it is quite clear that those sneering scare quote marks are entirely misplaced.
How about the quotation marks around “inside job” to describe the January 6 protest at the Capitol? I submit that the more we learn, the more the idea that it was largely an inside job fomented by various federal agencies seems plausible. Six or seven months after it happened, I gave a talk called “The January 6 Insurrection Hoax.” It turns out that I didn’t know the half of it. Julie Kelly, Darren Beattie, Tucker Carlson, and others have shown that the events of that day were at least in part orchestrated by government agents. (There were so many feds in and about the Capitol that day that the FBI lost track of the number.)
Again, what about the “Great Replacement” theory? Is it a “racist” fantasy, as the Times says? Or are those millions and millions of illegal trespassers who have poured over what used to be our southern border in fact welcomed here precisely because Democratic politicians see them as embryo Democratic voters (and part of the great welfare symbiosis upon which the perpetuation of the Democratic Party depends)?
The Times reporter goes on to say that Vivek’s embrace of Donald Trump’s “MAGA” agenda would mean “immediately eliminating the Department of Education, F.B.I., and Internal Revenue Service by executive order, cutting the federal work force by 75 percent in a mass layoff, without Congress’s approval, and pulling back America’s foreign military commitments, . . .”
This is true. I would call it a feature, not a bug, and so would scores of millions of American voters.
That, of course, is the reality that that Times reporter and the bubble-dwelling apparatchiks he huddles with cannot wrap their heads around. They are Davos-loving, Klaus-Schwab-admiring globalists. They are powerful, yes, but their number is small, and their true intentions are being exposed everywhere. Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, speaking last week at the World Economic Forum, put it well with a quotation from Javier Milei, the new president of Argentina: he had come not to guide sheep but to awaken lions.
That’s what Vivek Ramaswamy is about. Donald Trump, too. The New York Times doesn’t get it. That’s one more reason why it is an increasingly parochial publication that speaks only to a shrinking coterie of pampered, irrelevant dittoheads.
For as long as I could read the NY Times has been attempting to create news where none exists, avoid the news that is significant which they don’t like, such as the Holocaust and Ukrainian Genocide, and alter the language, of what they report, to impart a different meaning or emotional response for their narrow bunch of self proclaimed dedicated intellectual readers who have about as much in common with the American people as does Karl Marx and the Davos crowd of economic manipulators that could all be replaced by a few good journalists who managed to avoid a college education and figured out that reality and what is reported on TV have as much in common as the diet of an Inuit Eskimo has in common with an African Bushman.
The NY Times editorializes on the front page. Without the NY Times liberals would be as starved for taking points as would be Evangelical preachers without a Bible which, BTW, has been around a lot longer and gets much of history right.
The NY Times is not a paper that reports real news. It indoctrinates Marxist ideology softly. When I want to travel or consider where to dine and recreate I often give the NY Times Sunday section some consideration. It used to have a good classified but that section is deceased. But by far and wide the best use of the Times, for me, as a veterinarian, is to line the bottom of the stainless steel feline cages in our hospital. And that is probably where much of the publication eventually ends up, throughout America, and where, occasionally, a kennel worker will glance at an article before hurriedly inserting it into where it serves a truly useful purpose far greater than what its writers could ever imagine, appreciate and understand.
The NY Times has often struck me much the same as New Yorkers, so sure of its own superiority that no reference beyond itself is needed. That it is failing is not surprising – if I want progressive talking points, I can get them lots of places without the insufferable pomposity. That the staff fails to understand Ramaswamy’s campaign or it’s appeal is also not surprising because to comprehend others one needs to not suffer from encephalrectomitis and the NYT has obviously been a carrier since the 1930s at a minimum.
Call me a Debbie downer, a pessimist, a grump, or cynical curmudgeon–or all those things–but I cannot see how the Ruling Class will permit Trump to reclaim the White House again. Then again, it is possible that the Deep State et al, could be devious enough to practice a form of political Aikido. More on that in a moment.
While I understand Mr. Kimball’s article deals with Mr. Ramaswamy, the issue at hand is how to bring the bureaucratic state to heel, or even if that is possible. How Vivek or PDJT can accomplish that Herculean task must first be considered in light of how Mr. Trump can win election considering the oh-so-likely industrial-scale election fraud that will occur. Then we must not forget the current lawfare trials dogging President Trump. Though they are all weak cases and have suffered setbacks, it would be unwise to dismiss them entirely.
But let us assume lightning strikes twice, the Heavens part and a miracle of voter choice occurs and Trump wins–then what? Do we think the elites will just shrug and grouse, “we’ll get’em next time.”
Au contraire. The elites, though they may be many things, are not given to defeatism, and they will not accept Trump as president. Already there are numerous groups huddling and planning to thwart a Trump presidency with a tsunami of lawfare-type lawsuits all designed to stymie his agenda. And then, of course, there will inevitably be the “mostly peaceful” riots that will make the Summer of 2020 seem like the good ole days.
However, there is one other strategy which I alluded to in my first paragraph, and that is to use the momentum of current events to hasten the collapse of our economy by using a combination of tens of millions of illegal immigrants, plus the network of Democrat grievance hustlers to foment civil unrest. Add to that financial sabotage by an unaccountable Federal Reserve, an intransigent Senate, and a deeply corrupt and politicized judiciary, and you have the recipe for an acceleration of already quickening events.
Therefore, I don’t think its possible for any one man, no matter how committed or determined, to turn us around from our date with destiny. Too much damage has been done, too many illegal immigrants are here and unlikely to leave–or be removed–and the size of the debt is simply too large to manage a “soft landing”. When you add in the systemic corruption in the legal profession–law schools all the way to SCOTUS–plus the equally corrupt field of journalism, I do not see a united society determined to survive.
Every institution of power or influence is captured and controlled by leftist policies. And of course, all of these power centers are protected and defended by federal law enforcement and its sister intelligence agencies.
And let us not forget a very woke military. Though the Pentagon fiercely resisted being used to quell the riots during the Summer of 2020, or to be used to stop an invasion of illegal aliens on the border. It goes without saying that should We the People decide enough is enough and pushback in large numbers, the military will suddenly become quite enthusiastic–and aggressive–in response.
My point is simply this; we did not arrive at this point in our history quickly or Constitutionally, nor will we escape it thus.
One last thought: I watched an interview with Tucker Carlson and Tony Robbins yesterday and Robbins said one thing that caused me to ponder its significance. Robbins explained that when faced with a crisis or difficult times, it forces us to adapt to the circumstances of that crisis and rise above it by shedding old habits, thoughts and practices, and learning new ones in order to not only survive, but thrive.
So how does Robbins’ advice translate to events of late? First, we must reject normalcy bias, we must refuse to accept the ever-leftward movement of the Overton Window, and we must accept reality–bitter though it is. There was a coup d’état in November 2020, our government and all the institutions of power and authority in this country (and indeed, the Western world) are dedicated to the elimination of the middle class, the depopulation of its citizens, and the impoverishment and virtual slavery of those who remain.
THAT is reality. THAT is what we must deal with. And with apologies to Mr. Kimball, analyses of politicians and their personnel choices is really just whispering past the graveyard.
Max, great food for thought, both in Kimble’s article, your response, and that of Task and The Mad Gardener. In responding to you comment, let me start of with “I quite agree.” The fact Leftist elements are so entrenched in our bureaucracy that the 2024/28 Trump presidency will be even more stymied than it was from 2016 to 2020. It saddens me to know we will be subjected to even more hysteria from the press and more intransigence from the deep state that any true progress back to freedom will be won at great cost and long delays.
What I have difficulty factoring into this coming mess is the effect that a long term economic downturn will bring. Oh, I know the press will blame it entirely on Trump—that is a given, but it will also bring an increase in the pain and lengthen out the time we could expect recovery. What, if anything, will be left to build the future upon?
I do have one slim hope. Currently there is a case before the Supreme Court that might----might—defang the Administrative State. (and I sincerely hope the case does not turn out to be a “red” herring). My hope, too, is that if the Court rules in favor of the fishermen that it does so by not giving a narrow decision but as a broad one, one that de-fangs Chevron deference. If that happens, the weakening of the Administrative State might be large enough to allow Trump (and Ramaswamy----whatever position he is given) to dismantle the bureaucracy to manageable levels. If done so quickly, there might be hope for us all.
I agree that the Times doesn’t get it. Is this good or bad? If we go to Sun Tzu, it is good, because:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
The question is: when I quote a Chinese philosopher is that racist or anti-racist? Unfortunately my DEI consultant is taking the day off today.