Streetwise Professor

It’s quite amusing to observe the dismay and panic expressed in this NYT article about Trump’s Chief of Staff, John Kelly. OH MY GOD. HE ACTUALLY BELIEVES IN TRUMP’S AGENDA! WE THOUGHT HE WAS GOING TO TAME THE BEAST! WE’RE DOOMED! DOOMED I SAY!

For all of the talk of Mr. Kelly as a moderating force and the so-called grown-up in the room, it turns out that he harbors strong feelings on patriotism, national security and immigration that mirror the hard-line views of his outspoken boss. With his attack on a congresswoman who had criticized Mr. Trump’s condolence call to a slain soldier’s widow last week, Mr. Kelly showed that he was willing to escalate a politically distracting, racially charged public fight even with false assertions.

And in lamenting that the country no longer holds women, religion, military families or the dignity of life “sacred” the way it once did, Mr. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general whose son was killed in Afghanistan, waded deep into the culture wars in a way few chiefs of staff typically do. Conservatives cheered his defense of what they consider traditional American values, while liberals condemned what they deemed an outdated view of a modern, pluralistic society.

A Marine who “harbors strong feelings on patriotism.” Who could ever conceive of such a thing? And interesting choice of words, isn’t it? “Harbor” is often used to suggest something illicit, like harboring a fugitive, or to insinuate concealment. No, I would imagine that Kelly wears his patriotism on his sleeve.

And again, what does one expect from a career Marine who achieved four star rank? Yes, there are exceptions–cf. Smedley Butler–but high ranking Marines do tend to be conventionally patriotic, and in the right tail of the patriotism distribution.

And a Marine who takes national security seriously. Again–who knew?

Insofar as immigration is concerned, this should not be surprising either, for two reasons. First, as the transnational progressives/globalists at the NYT never cease telling us, there is a strong correlation between American nationalist beliefs (which, I must note, are different in key ways from the European nationalism which the likes of the NYT and its readership wrongheadedly confuse it with) and hostility to open borders. Second, is it any surprise that Trump chose someone who was in agreement with him on immigration to head DHS, which is responsible for immigration policy?

This article is self-satirizing. Which makes thing easy for me. I just have to point you to it, and you can take the laughs from there.

The Times and others (including house broken “conservatives” like Jennifer Rubin at the WaPo, who cites Kelly as a reason there should be no generals in the White House) somehow think that because the steely, disciplined, controlled Kelly is temperamentally different from the mercurial and indisciplined Trump that he must be ideologically different as well.

What idiocy! I would in fact think it highly likely that Kelly is more innately and consistently committed to MAGA and a MAGA agenda than Trump: Trump has been all over the ideological map in the last nearly 40 years, and there is a lingering suspicion that his new identity as American nationalist champion is little more than a cannily chosen political strategy, rather than a matter of conviction.

In contrast, there is little doubt that Kelly is a man of conviction, and the irony–which is driving the NYT into apoplexy, and which is probably enriching many therapists on the Upper West Side (who are probably themselves getting therapy)–is that it is eminently possible that Kelly will get Trump to internalize those convictions, and moreover, attempt to achieve them in a more disciplined, strategic, and steady way.

In other words, NYT: be very, very careful what you ask for. You just might get it.

One last thing. The very article that frets neurotically about Kelly’s pointed remarks about how few Americans serve in uniform (he calls those that do “the one percent”) and how little those who don’t serve know about those who do provides proof of the ignorance that Kelly criticizes. For catch this:

Correction: October 27, 2017 

An article on Thursday about the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, misidentified the branch of the armed forces in which his son, who was killed in combat, served. He was a Marine, not a soldier.

Anyone with passing familiarity with the US military would know that members of the United States Marine Corps are not “soldiers,” and indeed, bridle at the term: they are Marines, dammit. There was a time (and there may still be occasions) where making that mistake could get you a black eye and a bloody nose. The NYT (including the writer, fact checkers, editors) obviously does not even have passing familiarity with the US military, which is why they  find someone like Kelly utterly unfathomable.

John Kelly is from Mars: the New York Times is from the Planet Clueless.