Welcome to today’s edition of Watercooler: Last Week, RedState.   This WC is all about Posts, Reader’s Diaries, and comments at RedState

Hot Topics Last Week:

Trump’s repudiation of the Paris Accords were well represented here at RS.  I’ll not list these but only note that there was a lot of discussion around the whole AGW issue.

A reference to Origami by Streiff led to this post: Trump Administration Tells Democrats It Is Using Their Demand Letters for Origami Practice

Recurring Topics at RS:

The Futility in Expecting the Restoration of Constitutional Order … or is it really futile?  This topic comes up in many different themes in the threads on many different topics.

Theme 1: There are the give up on the GOP and join a new party threads. The issue with this one is that… well, there are lots of problems with this one and I’m sure they’ll rear their heads again in another 12-18 months!

Theme 2: There are the this guy is a great conservative and he can do it for us threads with the reverse argument that the this guy is a NOT great conservative and he will only lead us to ruin threads. I’ve taken to calling these the Champion arguments, as in the Crusades where a country sent champions to take back Jerusalem.  This type of argument is, to me, wrong in so many ways that it needs its own WC.

Theme 3: We need an Article V convention to pass new Constitutional Amendments to correct the lost Constitutional order.  This theme seems to include parts of the other three main themes in that (1) Trying to get the GOP to do this is a waste; (2) Someone will step up and be the wise Champion of the cause and we just have to hope they will step up and lead; and (4) Even if it doesn’t work we’ll have something to complain about so, woe is me gets new energy as an argument!

Theme 4: My least favorite type of thread is woe to this country, all is lost so let’s just talk about something else… anything else type threads, because, you know, gossip and other off-topic conversations is best to talk about because we need to talk about anything besides the restoration of Constitutional order.  Why? well… just because!  And you’re really mean to try to get me to do anything other than deflect!

There are many more that I could list but I think this will do for now.  I know that we should not obsess over this one subject but it does resurrect itself as a topic at RedState over and over and over again.

But, I’m a optimist at heart so consequently I view this issue differently.  I am convinced that there are more than enough arrows in our quiver to do battle on this issue and win, all that it takes is a well gamed out plan and a disciplined execution of that plan.  Borrowing from an exchange I recently had says it best for me:

I’ve said it before, I think there are a few ways left to us to get that consensus to restore the Constitution we need, it just won’t happen overnight and it may take a couple of decades to create the proper conditions and, in my opinion, if an Article V convention is forced in the next five years, it won’t happen there because of the things that have been pointed out about the games that’ll be played there.

Hope springs eternal for me! I have a saying that I use all of the time is that “expectations are monitored by performance”, monitored in the sense of “to oversee, supervise, or regulate”, until the conditions are brought into being that’ll result in those items, it’s hard to have the expectations that restoring the Constitutional order can be done.

One of my favorite themes in SF is the theme of creating facts on the ground for an unthinkable achievement, like the purported control of gravity by some adversary, and putting a team in charge of discovering how it was done so that the friendlies can counter it. By doing that they removed the mental block that prevented them (us) from formulating a line of attack to solve the problem they had.

I think that we need to somehow envision what those political conditions must be in order to start to remove the mental impediment that our past performance has created in us. Then, once we do that, we need to work back to the starting game conditions and rules and, only then, work like hell to bring about the predicate activities that’ll get us to that end-state. Create and play the game, it’s more fun than pessimism!

Well, that’s a take on a recurring theme.

Tail Wags Dog:

Once again, the comments in this post by Streiff shows that the tail can in fact wag the dog: McMaster Talks About the Alleged Jared Kushner Backchannel  …Two hundred comments on a relatively short post.

Memorable RS One-Liners:

“I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just.”–Jefferson

“But the truth is whether the Trump supporter chooses to accept or not, until his bona fides have naturally developed by a good year or so in the arguably most complex, stressful, influential office in all the land, my advice to his avid supporters is to quit it” Earhartam

RedState Tips:

If you have one you’d like to share place it in the comments.  If it needs preserving I’ll include it in a future WC.

Drink up, that’s it for the Watercooler today. Remember, it’s an open thread all about RedState contributors from: the front page, Reader’s Diaries, or in the comments section.

Thanks for stopping by, hanging out, and drink up.