Because if it does, that means it applies to several people, or even an entire group. And that makes it not very useful as a criticism of an individual.
And please note my Trump disclaimer: I'm not so much a Trump "fan" who blindly worships his every word, as an interested observer who sees blatant hypocrisy all around me, and is willing to listen to Trump's side of any argument because the current political class largely sucks. So the bar is, admittedly, pretty low. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
Let's make a list of some of these complaints.
- Not conservative enough, or at all
- Authoritarian strongman
- Racist xenophobic hater
- Rude and disrespectful
- Dumb reality show clown
- Billionaire who only pretends to care about our problems
- Weak and vague on policy details
- Cannot win the general election because appeal is limited
- Hates / wants to deport Muslims
- Won't disavow endorsements from undesirables
I will write about some of these topics over the coming weeks. Most of them are a little silly, and several apply to our sitting president. All of them can be applied to any number of politicians today, or are exaggerations of his actual quotes or positions.
For instance, #2. Anybody who voted for Obama but wants to express indignant outrage that electing Trump would be electing an authoritarian strongman, i.e. the "Mussolini" argument, is not paying enough attention to the guy in office right now. And by the way, the supposed Mussolini quote that Trump re-tweeted over the weekend, is not actually a Mussolini quote. It's from WWI. 1918. And it's a damn good quote, even if Mussolini appropriated it later, and if he did that, it doesn't render the quote any less true. What kind of argument is that, anyway? "A bad guy said something timeless and true, so that poisons the meaning forever"? What?
For instance, #2. Anybody who voted for Obama but wants to express indignant outrage that electing Trump would be electing an authoritarian strongman, i.e. the "Mussolini" argument, is not paying enough attention to the guy in office right now. And by the way, the supposed Mussolini quote that Trump re-tweeted over the weekend, is not actually a Mussolini quote. It's from WWI. 1918. And it's a damn good quote, even if Mussolini appropriated it later, and if he did that, it doesn't render the quote any less true. What kind of argument is that, anyway? "A bad guy said something timeless and true, so that poisons the meaning forever"? What?
FYI: "better to live one single day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep" isn't Mussolini, it's a famous Italian saying from Piave 1918— John Schindler (@20committee) February 28, 2016