{"id":5119,"date":"2017-03-01T15:31:11","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T20:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=5119"},"modified":"2017-03-01T15:47:01","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T20:47:01","slug":"prezza-denchal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=5119","title":{"rendered":"Prezza-Denchal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When your kids finally act like members of the human species over dinner, you go out of your way to compliment them.\u00c2\u00a0 How grown up they’ve been!<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0 When the dog that will jump and hump any goddam leg in range keeps to himself for a minute while guests are over, you praise him. \u00c2\u00a0What a good boy!<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0 Why? Because you want to encourage further good behavior and you’ve been trained to put up with bad behavior.<\/p>\n

And so when the kids and dogs do what they are supposed to do,\u00c2\u00a0 you act like they are friggin’ saints.\u00c2\u00a0 And then they think that they deserve praise for doing the minimum.\u00c2\u00a0 (Chris Rock<\/a> had a fabulous version of this insight – but it’s got some… uh… language.)<\/p>\n

Well, you know where this is going.\u00c2\u00a0 President Trump’s address to the Joint Session of Congress did not involve any egregious lapses of rhetorical judgment, overt antagonism or any ad-libbed lines beginning with ‘believe me…’.\u00c2\u00a0 It was still filled with dopey lines like, promoting “clear water<\/em>” (just after ordering the repeal of the CleanWater Rule), and “We just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts<\/em>.”\u00c2\u00a0 And “And a new surge of optimism is placing impossible dreams firmly within our grasp<\/em>.”\u00c2\u00a0 Yeech.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Trump’s speech was all over the place argumentatively.\u00c2\u00a0 Just take for example the fact that he rebukes the Democrats with the line<\/p>\n

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The time for small thinking is over. The time for trivial fights is behind us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But then he just rolls into the cadence-windup for the big finish.\u00c2\u00a0 Not a well-written or well-delivered speech.\u00c2\u00a0 Not inspiring or clear about what or how things will be done.\u00c2\u00a0 But not an hour of blustery windbaggery or braggadocio.\u00c2\u00a0 He stopped being the cartoon villain. And so the pundits fell all over themselves with praise:<\/p>\n

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He became President of the United States in that moment. Period.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Said Van Jones on CNN<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Tom Brokaw said his presentation was<\/p>\n

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Tonight, this is easily the most Presidential he’s been.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And that’s just the media folks.\u00c2\u00a0 Breitbartians<\/a> have been reporting that there has been a wave of “positive reaction” to the speech.\u00c2\u00a0 And so that’s where we are, folks.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve gone from Obama’s standard to just being Presidential.<\/p>\n

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When your kids finally act like members of the human species over dinner, you go out of your way to compliment them.\u00c2\u00a0 How grown up they’ve been!\u00c2\u00a0 When the dog that will jump and hump any goddam leg in range keeps to himself for a minute while guests are over, you praise him. \u00c2\u00a0What a … Continue reading Prezza-Denchal<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,54],"tags":[2045,1416],"class_list":["post-5119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-things-that-are-false","tag-donald-j-trump","tag-presidential-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5119"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5123,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions\/5123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}