# The traditionalists are in the saddle? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 15, 2017, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-traditionalists-are-in-the-saddle/784480 "2017-04-15T00:40:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-traditionalists-are-in-the-saddle/784480/21 "2017-04-18T09:34:23Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Krauthammer is a cunt. His view of foreign policy is that the best person is the one who fellates Israel the mostest. Once someone says that the US has been sleepwalking for the last 8 years, they can be written off as obviously too one-eyed to be worth the time of day. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-traditionalists-are-in-the-saddle/784480/22 "2017-04-18T11:43:21Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > How do you feel about Gorsuch? I like Gorsuch. But we’d have gotten him or someone like him with ANY Republican President. There was no need to elect an incompetent jerk to get a conservative judge. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-traditionalists-are-in-the-saddle/784480/23 "2017-04-18T15:29:51Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > “America First” is a horrible governing philosophy, besides having unfortunate historical connotations. The US is not the only country on the planet and showing a public face of selfish petulance is not good diplomacy. Yes “America First” is a horrible governing philosophy because it is a governing philosophy. I would prefer it over “American Government First”, especially if I was living outside of the United States and under their bombs. I don’t believe it is appropriate for someone resting comfortably to slander “America First” when the alternative is the US government terrorizing millions of people abroad. This is why I wouldn’t go out of my way to criticize “America First”. There have been some real killers in Trump’s position. Truman, L. Johnson, G. W. Bush, etc. They have been advocates of “American Government First”, but this ideology does not have "unfortunate historical connotations. Very interesting. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-traditionalists-are-in-the-saddle/784480/24 "2017-04-18T15:37:04Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Because if there was one thing the George W. Bush administration was noted for it was its string of foreign policy triumphs. Yes very strange how Obama is not considered a traditionalist. The way his government unnecessarily escalated conflicts and destabilized regions was very typical of the postwar tradition. Oh that’s right he was a Black guy, silly me. He was New. New as in good and New as in bad depending on your style. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-traditionalists-are-in-the-saddle/784480/25 "2017-04-18T17:13:47Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > …a president who is basically your average Joe off the street… Huh? Da fuq? ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2017, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-traditionalists-are-in-the-saddle/784480/26 "2017-04-19T03:05:30Z")
I suspect **Sage Rate** is referring to The Orange One’s knowledge of running a country which is perhaps at about “man off the street” level. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2017, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-traditionalists-are-in-the-saddle/784480/27 "2017-04-19T10:30:30Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > I suspect **Sage Rate** is referring to The Orange One’s knowledge of running a country which is perhaps at about “man off the street” level. I feel this overestimates Trumps knowledge by a large factor. I suspect Joe or Jane Average would be more open to listening to the advice of his intelligence agencies, get less of his worldview from Fox and approach the job with a bit more humility, and maybe even realize that insulting the press for no good reason is not a good strategy. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2017, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-traditionalists-are-in-the-saddle/784480/28 "2017-04-19T10:48:04Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > I feel this overestimates Trumps knowledge by a large factor. Your average Joe probably can’t even locate more than 5 countries on the map. On pure knowledge (not intellect), he’s probably a little higher than the average on global issues, foreign cultures, etc. than your average person. Though, I doubt that he actively seeks out knowledge, so where he has more global knowledge than your average person, your average person probably has a similar quantity of knowledge that’s relevant to their occupation, just less useful to a President. > [@](#): > > I suspect Joe or Jane Average would be more open to listening to the advice of his intelligence agencies, get less of his worldview from Fox and approach the job with a bit more humility, and maybe even realize that insulting the press for no good reason is not a good strategy. Depends on the specific Joe. There are plenty of blowhards in the world, and many of them do listen to Fox. The “drunk uncle” comparison that everyone made about Trump, back during the primaries, always felt to me like a pretty apt description of Trump from a political standpoint. Obviously, he’s a drunk uncle with a fortune, and so usually one might expect a bit more from him than the norm on an intellect level, but so far his business background only seems to add the occasional business person into the mix, in his cabinet, rather than being all talking heads and news mongers, like Bannon, Carson, etc. and not his actual choices. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2017, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-traditionalists-are-in-the-saddle/784480/29 "2017-04-19T21:04:34Z")
AK84: > [@](#): > > I suspect even the god-Kings of ancient Egypt quickly discovered the practical limits of their power/were smart enough not to test it. If the Bible has any truth to it, it would seem that at least some of them weren’t. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-traditionalists-are-in-the-saddle/784480/30 "2017-04-20T02:42:55Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > It now appears that Bannon is demoted and that Trump has largely ceded power to his son in law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka. > > The alt-right will see none of the policies they hoped for, and the Left will see little that it feared. The Trump White House is being run by Jewish Democrats, not by Republican antisemites! > > Trump the man is still an asshole. But the Trump administration is now following fairly mainstream policies. Are you fucking kidding? Kushner’s Jewish, so he’s a fucking Democrat? What the fuck? Yeah, Trump personally isn’t anti-semitic, or anti-gay, as long as a Jew or a fag is willing to kiss his ass they’re terrific in his mind. But he’s perfectly willing to listen to bigots and enact their pet policies, as long as they know how to flatter his ego. Because there are only two types of people in Trump’s world. Terrific people who stroke his ego and make him feel wonderful, and pathetic unfair losers who don’t. And of course, as is typical of Republicans, you think that if Conservatives aren’t getting what they want, then Liberals must be celebrating. Which is fucking ridiculous. Sure, Trump isn’t always bad for America because he’s enacting bad conservative policies. Other times he’s bad for America because he’s enacting bad policies that aren’t on the conservative-liberal axis. Like, lying about everything, betraying our allies, deciding to bomb places while eating cake, being a fucking idiot who discovers after talking to the Premier of China for ten minutes that North Korea is complicated. Fucking Christ. Trump is terrible for conservative Republicans. He’s terrible for liberal Democrats. He’s terrible for mainstream pragmatists. He’s terrible for idealistic humanitarians. He’s terrible on every axis you’d care to name, unless your biggest issue is not tax cuts for the 1% but tax cuts for the 0.01%. And even then, Trump is happy to fuck over the super-rich along with the rest of the country if and when it suits him. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-traditionalists-are-in-the-saddle/784480.md?page=1)