Wall Street Journal: Trump May Put Universities On the Hook for the Loans Its Students Take Out, and Incentivize Them To Make Sure Their Students Have Some Chance of Paying Back These Massive Sums

I'm pretty sure this is Authoritarian, Fascist, and Racist, because it imperils the left's phony-baloney jobs.

The White House is weighing a measure that would require colleges and universities to take a financial stake in their students' ability to repay government loans, an effort that could squeeze loan availability to students and reduce defaults.

For several months, Trump administration officials have been discussing enacting such a mechanism or making a push for one in Congress as part of a broader effort to combat rising college costs.

In the administration's budget proposal released Monday, officials made brief mention of a "request to create an educational finance system that requires postsecondary institutions that accept taxpayer funds to have skin in the game through a student loan risk-sharing program."

Such a proposal could be included in a coming executive order addressing higher education, several officials said...

The order the White House is preparing, expected in coming weeks and lead by the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, will likely touch on several hot-button issues in higher education, including a possible provision tying federal research dollars to rules about free speech on campuses, these people said.

The executive order would be signed with an ink produced by crushing up Viagra tablets and mixing them with panther blood and cobra venom.

SAS Motto: Who Dares, Wins.

The GOP has been timid, half-hearted, and corrupted by cowardice for too long.

It's time for l'audace.

There's a principle in chess. And poker. It's a simple principle: Always be attacking. Always. (Well, except for the times you can't attack because your opponent has executed that principle better than you have.)

In chess, when you attack, you reduce the number of possible moves your opponent can make (because he must make some move in response to the attack) and it is only by attacking that even high-level players can predict opponent moves and play three or even seven moves ahead. Without an attack, you leave your opponent with dozens of possible moves each move, which then become thousands of possible combinations over three or five or seven successive movies.

But by always attacking, you reduce the number of responses to a mere two or three per move, and you can evaluate which among them looks like the best response from the opponent.

In Poker, as they say, your two best moves in almost any situation are to 1, raise the bet, or 2, fold the hand. Calling is weak and passive and will lose you money. But if you make decisive moves -- fold a hand and put an end to the bleeding, or raise an opponent's bet and make him decide whether he wants to match the bet or just fold the hand -- you give yourself more chances to win (or, in the case of folding -- to lose cheaply).

The Republican Party is a party of weak poker players who believe in calling bets forever -- weak, passive play that never puts the question to the opponent -- and even of suddenly folding a hand when there's not even a bet at stake.

They call this "being reasonable," and they are very proud to string together dozens, sometimes hundreds of very reasonable defeats all in a row.

(From Wikipedia: Who Dares, Wins (Latin: Qui audet adipiscitur; ... French: Qui ose gagne; Italian: Chi osa vince; Portuguese: Quem ousa, vence; German: Wer wagt, gewinnt) is a motto made popular by the British Special Air Service. It is normally credited to the founder of the SAS, Sir David Stirling.)

BTW Wikipedia also included the Greek but there's no way this system is going to print Greek characters. But I'll include thrasos, a concept explained to me by Columbo in For Your Eyes Only.

Trump certainly has thrasos and l'audace. It's very much in doubt if he has the corresponding virtue of caution, but I don't think you can really have an abundance of both. I think your personality is set to either favor risk-taking, doubling-down, and aggression, or it's set to favor risk-aversion and mitigation, withdrawal from confrontation, and passivity.

The cucks kinda-sorta suggest that they're just as capable of showing some thrasos, some balls, some daring in the appropriate moment, while being all judicious and cautious the rest of the time, but I don't see any evidence that they can suddenly steel themselves and become something other than what they are. I see them being too scared to make bold and controversial moves all the time.

So, does anyone think the risk-averse, cautious cuck crew will suddenly show some thrasos and endorse this move? Or do you think they'll go with their usual timorous instincts and shy away from anything big and bold and likely to upset their leftist Twitter palz too much?

Likewise, I think people tend to either be very sensitive to other people's feelings about them -- in which case they are well-mannered, polite in disagreement, and generally "nice," but at the expense of not being assertive, combative when necessary, and ruthless in pursuit of their own interests.

And on the other hand, the people who do not really care about the opinions of others have much comfort in being assertive, combative, and unashamed in pursuing their own interests. They come off like assholes, yes, because the opposite of "nice and solicitous of the opinions of others" is "asshole who doesn't care what other people think."

I think this party is controlled by a lot of people who want to be "nice" all the time and not nearly enough people who can be assholes when needed.

I definitely do not believe that anyone can be "nice" 99% of the time but then go into Super-Asshole mode for just those few occasions that require it. I think your default setting controls your behavior almost all of the time.

So with Trump, with a lot of what the cucks call "flaws," I don't see them as flaws. I see them as different personality settings which yes, do have downsides associated with them -- but upsides as well, and further, I see the crap the cucks want ("let's be nice to all of our enemies and pretend the goals of the political contest are to show Who Is More Morally Upstanding rather than winning any tangible policy conflicts") has significant downsides too.

I don't believe you can Be Both. I don't think you can be All Things to All People. I don't think you can reinvent yourself moment-to-moment like Madonna doing costume changes in a 1985 show.

We may contain multitudes, but we don't contain an infinite number of personality permutations.

Nice is good. Nice is nice. It's nice to be nice.

But nice is also passive and frequently ineffectual. If your goal is just to be nice, then you can satisfy your goal of being nice by being nice.

But what if being nice is not your primary goal, or even a goal your rank very highly? What if your political goals are political in nature -- in that you want political victories from politcial contests, and not merely personal victories, like showing I'm Better Than They Are or Look At My Principles, Aren't They Shiny and Smooth from Never Actually Being Brought Into Any Fight?

We seem to have a major argument about what it is we actually want from conservatism in this moment. Some of us want actual tangible political conservative victories; some of us just want the personal validation of feeling like we did the Nice thing and lost like gentlemen (with our principles still pristine and without a single ding or scuff because we never risked them in a fight).

For the latter sort of person: Why even pretend you're involved in politics? If all you want is self-validation, buy some Tony Robbins tapes used on eBay and just play them to yourself every night. You don't have to pretend to be involved in politics when all you want is reassurance that you're a Really Good Person.

Just tell yourself You're A Really Good Person, like mantra. (Most of you guys seem to already do this; many NeverTrumper articles are about no other topic than the claimed Goodness of the writer.)

Why pretend this is in service of a political struggle, when it's obvious to everyone else (and it surely must at least be becoming obvious to you) that the "game" you are playing is simply to acquire I'm a Good Person chits.

Your actual fight isn't political; it's personal and psychological. You just want to tell people how very, very Virtuous you are, and you want your fellow Virtue-Mongers to emotionally validate you and tell you how virtuous you are in return for assuring them that they're virtuous.

Why dress this up with the pretense it's about policy, even remotely? The huge number of complete flips on "Eternal Sacred Conservative Dogma" that you guys have executed to show your Virtue proves that you're entirely uninterested in policy or political outcomes.

If we set up a site, call it The HugBox, where you could all publicly congregate and write endless, wordy posts about how virtuous you are, would you agree to stay in The Hugbox and leave the rest of us who still think things like But Gorsuch and But the Economy still matter alone?

BTW: They're not even "nice," of course. They just think that rumor-spreading and other indirect forms of attack are "better," somehow, than direct confrontation.

And they're only nice and respectful to those they believe are worthy of respect -- a group which mostly includes (surprise, surprise!) their leftwing twitter pals and MSNBC buddies.

Their colleagues at National Review? Not so much, it turns out.

But I will leave these immoral monsters with their delusions intact if they just get the fuck out of my party.

posted by Ace of Spades at 05:21 PM

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