Erick Erickson continues to discover that he backed, well, a clown …
It is Obamaesque to think one can negotiate with a terrorist regime that is premised on bringing about the apocalypse. The Vice President claims the Trump Administration is dealing with both moderates and hardliners. The definition of a moderate in Iran is one who wants to nuke Israel tomorrow, instead of today.
The President of the United States chose to engage Iran. It dealt a serious blow. But instead of dealing a knock out blow, the President ordered Israel to pull its punches. We have now harmed our relationships with our Middle Eastern allies who depend on us for protection. The situation is now more unstable than before the war began and it is all because of a single person who swears he’ll get a deal any day now.
Erickson is, to his credit, being honest, but I think his real shortcoming is the set of false or unproven assumptions from which he operates. For instance, the assumption that his religion automatically maps to good and Islam to bad has a collection of knock-on conclusions that are sometimes not fulfilled by reality.
Similar remarks apply to an Iranian government that is entangled in questions of clinging to positions of social prestige. And that applies back to us.
Yes, this is unsurprising, but to accept it and not explore alternate explanations is a mistake. For example, assuming the Iranian government, a large entity, is evil will lead to expectations which will remain unfulfilled; but if we accept a common-sense proposition that they’re doing their best to care for what they consider important, just as we do, then our expectations will come closer to reality. We can guess they’re operating from assumptions a millenia out of date, we can assume they’re trying to follow the rules issued by a divinity long, long ago.
Just as some of us still do today.
I’m mostly avoiding detail here due to my continuing surgical recovery, but I must say: I violently reject Erickson’s first remark. By all accounts I’ve read, the Iran deal was considered an ongoing success, as nuclear weapons were not under development and, more importantly, the outraged Iranian hardliners were losing credibility. Whether it would have continued to be successful is moot, of course.
But that does bring up President Trump, who destroyed the JCPOA. Since he’s Party leader, Republicans generally are hesitant to criticize him, and while Erickson has offered the occasional criticism, his cited post is a step towards acknowledging President Trump has a mental illness, perhaps pathological narcissism and dementia, along with a fourth-rate understanding of how politics really works. What we see is near-childish grasping of the visible signs of governmental greatness, such as monumental and imposing buildings, military victories, and dominance over others; these are signposts of the illness he may have.
He is fortunate to fail, honestly, as success might cost him more than he can imagine, from conviction as a war criminal to the humiliating deconstruction of monumental mementos, which are desired by no one but him and his coterie.
I’ll leave it at that out of necessity.
