wow - interview of an idiot - Slate -"What a Pro-Trump English Professor Thinks Now"

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2017/02/what_pro_trump_english_professor_mark_bauerlein_thinks_now_that_his_candidate.html

(What a squirrely little asshole - my comment!)

A conversation with Mark Bauerlein, the rare academic who believed—and still believes—we’ve found the right leader to make America great again.

By Isaac Chotiner

The national divisions that emerged in the runup to Donald Trump’s election were largely unseen in one group of Americans—namely, the overlapping and generally liberal ranks of college professors, writers, and intellectuals. Mark Bauerlein is an exception. An English professor at Emory University and a senior editor at the journal First Things, Bauerlein supported Trump’s candidacy, hailing it as a response to political correctness, which he views as immensely damaging to American society. He is also a hawk on immigration and a fierce patriot.


A religious Catholic, Bauerlein once wrote a short piece about how disturbed he was about swearing, which included the line, “When we hear obscenities in closed public places, we should recognize conscience as an ally against degradation.” One wonders how someone horrified by vulgarity could vote for Donald Trump. Yet, as he told the New Yorker before Trump came to office, “There are some things in politics that you say, ‘This runs against what I believe.’ You have to suck it up.”

Now that the Trump dream has become reality, I wanted to talk to Bauerlein about how the president has behaved since Nov. 8. Bauerlein had hailed Trump’s rise as a deliverance from the status quo. Did he feel that deliverance has been worth the cost? During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed the different forms of disdain elites can show, Trump’s brand of identity politics, and the role of racism in American life.

Isaac Chotiner: How do you think Trump’s time as president-elect and president have gone?

Mark Bauerlein: I will take the inauguration speech. ... That was simply a firm and vigorous reiteration of everything he promised in the campaign. It sounded the hyperpopulist message that many found reminiscent of Huey Long and other demagogues. I actually found it closer to the populism of Walt Whitman and his paean to the working man, and the fact that the great spirit of America is not to be found in the legislatures or the executives but in the people, the ordinary common man. And he singles out the necessity of the president taking his hat off to the people at inauguration, instead of the people taking off their hats. I saw that as an old Andrew Jackson, 19th-century populist rendition that is absolutely necessary at the present time, because the political class has become precisely a class. That is, a distinct group with its own interests, and those interests are distinct from everyone who lives outside the state capitals and the Beltway.

snip - read on - to where the subject conveniently fails to answer some zingers (how republican of him)

[underpants]

1. Wow he's stupid

I feel like I'm going to be posting that a lot in the next few years

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. yup

[DetlefK]

3. Goldman Sachs bankers? Doesn't count. Hostility towards patriots? Meh, deal with it.

Trump trash-talking the US? Can't comment on it because I haven't seen it.

Trump says stupid things? You know, everybody says stupid things, that's normal.

People are afraid? Don't worry, eventually his handlers will reign in on Trump.

Trump playing identity politics? Everyone is playing identity politics.

Why is racism such a hot issue right now as Trump got elected? White guilt.



EDIT:
There is a proverb among physicists: "The String-Theory doesn't make predictions. It makes excuses."
This is exactly what this professor sounds like: Nothing but excuses.

[NRaleighLiberal]

4. clearly he heads the idiocy department.

anyone who takes a class with this clown deserves a refund