Actual flaws
Speaking of Trump, I found this pretty hilarious –
Michael Nugent
The Al Smith Dinner helped to humanise Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who are both demonised beyond their actual flaws.
Hahaha yes the two are exactly equivalent.
No but seriously – it’s beyond me how anyone who’s not as awful as Trump is himself can say that. Trump puts his actual flaws on display at all times. He makes it quite impossible to overlook them.
Nugent was also tweeting up a storm about how it doesn’t matter that Trump has refused to say he’ll accept the election results if he loses. Easy for him to say from the other side of the Atlantic.
Some people are comparing Trump’s refusal to Al Gore. There is a difference. Al Gore had an actual oddity occur in the Florida election, and he requested a recount. A recount was probable anyway because of the close margin.
You might as well compare him with Richard Nixon, who requested a recount of some states in the 1960 election – which was his right, and when the recount showed he was not the winner, he conceded the election, moved on, and ran later.
I hate when I have to say good things about Nixon, but it’s funny how good Nixon looks when compared to Trump.
The recount was automatic in 2000. Gore didn’t demand it or instigate it. (And even if he had, I don’t’ think anyone would have blinked, seeing as the vote was incredibly close.) More to the point, Gore didn’t spend months before the election talking about how the entire electoral process was illegitimate.
No one is saying that Trump shouldn’t have the right to contest an election with obvious irregularities or an unfathomably close count. He does have that right, and no one would object to him exercising it.
Nugent has a moral blind spot the size of the Atlantic.
Lady M:
Yes.
And yet he feels he occupies the highest moral ground there is at all times, even when he’s writing dozens of chapters about how someone demonstrably not very bad is bad, while courting the admiration of very obviously terrible people.
It is a bit of a pattern, isn’t it. The people at the slime pit are wonderful, truth-loving activists, and Trump is demonized beyond his “flaws.”
It feels like neutralism for show – that both sides must be damned equally or not at all. Trying to keep the status quo and (as mentioned by latsot) the high ground, when judging the extremes of Trump/pitters comes across as a sleazy thing to do.
Nugent isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Of COURSE Trump’s refusal, as a Presidential candidate, to accept the outcome of democratic processes in the absence of evidence of their subversion is hugely significant! Especially as it is combined with claims of “rigging” – again, without a shred of evidence. Nugent hasn’t only failed to grasp the obvious social/political significance of Trump’s claims of rigging and possible refusal to concede, he’s also failed to point out Trump’s lack of intellectual integrity (because there is no evidence for his claims) – which is odd for someone who thinks of himself as a “thought leader”.
It’s moments like these, where I encounter the intellectual and moral paucity of atheists like Nugent, that I pine for Christopher Hitchens.
[…] – it’s just occurred to me. I wonder if that’s why Michael Nugent has been defending Trump – maybe he feels rapport with a guy who likes to sue people for defamation because they […]