As good a barometer as any of the effect of Trump on the CJM (Counter-Jihad Mainstream) may be gleaned from a still growing comments thread attached to Spencer's missive posted at Jihad Watch concerning the fallout from the now Twitterversally infamous Chicago Trump rally where a more or less rag-tag rabble (the French racaille comes to mind, or the German Sturmabteilung...) so disrupted the proceedings (including threats to Trump serious enough that Secret Service had to spirit him off stage) that it had to be cancelled.
When I began drafting this latest blog posting yesterday, there were only about 27 comments, but I had a feeling it would mushroom. And so it has -- to over 250 less than 24 hours later.
Among those comments, we see a division, the two sides approximately characterized as those who support Trump as "not perfect but the best we've got" on the one hand, and those who are still harping on Trump for his Garland gaffe against Spencer & Geller, as well as, more amorphously, for supposed signs of an ominous "fascist demagoguery" in his agenda.
One of the more measured examples of the latter complaint comes from "Mitch" --
Donald Trump’s popularity around here seems based on the perception, the wish, the projection, that he’d be a strong counter-jihadist.
We all want that.
But if we get that at the expense of our constitution, we will have lost the war. After eight years of a lawless president, a legislating Supreme Court, an abdicating Congress, we need a return to founding principals, not we’ll-show-em-this-time-because our guy is the “patriotic” type of executive-order-signer. Lawlessness is not patriotic. Later, after the republic is completely lost, will be the time for strongmen.
I almost lost my latté reading that last sentence (which I bolded for emphasis). Mitch evidently didn't realize quite what he was saying, conceding defeat to Mohammedans in the name of abstract principles -- principles not set in stone as he would like to think, but rather interpreted by folks like him. No thanks, Mitch.
Mitch goes on to write:
We need a president now; not another ruler. We have immigration law. Enforce it. We have laws against treason. Enforce them.
This shows one of the typical perspectives of the CJM -- to sorely underestimate the nature of the threat we are facing in the coming decades of this 21st century. Mitch probably thinks it's just emanating from a Minority of Extremists (not a "Tiny" Minority -- no; Mitch is a robust Jihad Watcher, he knows it's more than Tiny, but it's still small enough, contained enough, and not metastasizing enough such as to warrant only modestly conservative measures to manage); most Muslims just wanna have a sandwich; we can tell which Muslims are going to explode (the ones with wild eyes and long beards and/or hijabs if females) and which ones aren't (the ones wearing Western garb and smiling at us and assuring us that Islam is a religion of peace); and hey, it's not a systemic problem among a demographic we cannot clearly delineate, a threat that is metastasizing, since among the complex demographics of Muslims swim innumerable, indistinguishable fanatics plotting terror attacks against us in the coming years more horrific than 911. No, says Mitch; all we need is a true blue Constitutional President who will make sure the house mortgage is in order, the plumbing is repaired, the front and back doors are locked, the windows reinforced, and the children doing their homework upstairs, as the house is on fire. Such a President is, apparently according to Mitch, unable to do anything about it, for only a "strong man" would defend it from going up -- and down -- in flames.
Meanwhile, the most flagrant example of the "Trump is a fascist" contingent in the comments section came from a long-time Jihad Watcher veteran, "wildjew", who often in the past has been quite strongly anti-Islam (I haven't done a study of his commentary over the years to determine the extent of his asymptotic spasms, if any, but he has seemed to be less objectionable than most). Quickly into the unfolding discussion, wildjew devolves into referring to Trump as “a racist, or a white supremacist or a fascist” and his supporters as “fascists”. Talk about needless provocation, eh...? One Jihad Watcher I'm only vaguely familiar with and can't be sure is a long-timer, "Adrian", had some good defenses of Trump in this regard, as did the otherwise stolidly obtuse "Wellington" (scroll up and down around "wildjew").
Adrian's impassioned defense of Trump, for example, hits the right notes:
Mortimer, before you commence lecturing Mr. Trump on what he
should or should not be learning, consider if it hadn’t been for Trump,
NO OTHER other candidate on both sides would have addressed the muslim
refugee issue like he did.
Furthermore, he deserves a ton of credit for his courageous (in today’s climate) statement: “Islam hates us.”
(I was also disappointed Trump did not understand the Garland, TX issue, but there is a chance he might be starting to see the light… )
Which other candidate when attacked by the media for his “Islam hates us” statement would have remained firm like he did, without any PC walking away from it? NOONE.
Trump is bringing up very important issues that have been hidden for years… and just possibly lurching his way to an even fuller understanding…
Furthermore, he deserves a ton of credit for his courageous (in today’s climate) statement: “Islam hates us.”
(I was also disappointed Trump did not understand the Garland, TX issue, but there is a chance he might be starting to see the light… )
Which other candidate when attacked by the media for his “Islam hates us” statement would have remained firm like he did, without any PC walking away from it? NOONE.
Trump is bringing up very important issues that have been hidden for years… and just possibly lurching his way to an even fuller understanding…
(The "mortimer" Adrian is addressing there is a Jihad Watch regular I've long had deep doubts about -- see here, and then scroll up to see the context.)
Then came a nice breeze of fresh air: a long-time Jihad Watch comments veteran, "Alarmed Pig Farmer" -- after "wildjew" slung another condemnation of Trump as a "flaming hypocrite" -- wedged in a remark typically earthy and wry:
Trump is a flaming hypocrite. So what? We’ll take anybody with a
pulse at this point. We’re that desperate, and he’s a good a roll of
the dice as any.
And of course, along with this polarization, we see some attempts at fence-sitting, such as from one "CogitoErgoSum" who writes:
I am not a supporter of Trump but until I see him ordering his followers to disrupt the rallies of his rivals, I’m not going to be against him either.
Yes, that's the ticket. Let's continue fiddling & quibbling while Rome burns.
At any rate, I'll resume my wading in my hip-high rubber galoshes through the deeper end of this Jihad Watch comments thread and may publish subsequent postings on it here, forthwith and/or anon.
