Monday, May 09, 2016

We Didn't Start The Fire



Like a blackout drunk at the ragged end of a three decade bender, ace Wall Street Journal political reporter and semi-aquatic alcohol beverage enthusiast, Peggy Noonan, has no idea how anything happened, or who did what, or why they did it, or when.  All she knows for sure is that when she woke up this morning sprawled on the dewy, well-tended lawn of the St. Ronald Reagan Tomb and Gift Shoppe someone had stolen her underpants, her youth and the last of the Beefeaters.  Also she vaguely remembers seeing some kind of orange-haired man-yeti drive off with her political party sometime in the night.
Trump Was a Spark, Not the Fire
The establishments, both media and conservative, failed to anticipate how they’d be consumed.
Yes, that other media. 
And those other conservatives. 
Who are part of that other establishment.  
Waaaay over there and not anywhere near Peggy Noonan.
...
It does not show an understanding of the moment to say Donald Trump by himself has changed the Republican Party. It is closer to the mark to say the base of the party is changing and Mr. Trump’s electric arrival on the scene made obvious what was already happening.

For this reason among others, I do not understand the impulse of the NeverTrump people to anathametize and shun those Republicans who will not vow to oppose Mr. Trump and commit to defeating him. They have been warned that if they don’t do these things they will not be allowed to help rebuild the party after Mr. Trump destroys it. Conservatives love to throw conservatives out of conservatism; it’s like an ancestral tic. But great political movements should not be run like private clubs. And have the anathemitizers noticed they aren’t in charge anymore? That in the great antiestablishment disruption of 2016 they have been upended, too?

We don’t know what’s coming in 2016, or what happens to the GOP if Mr. Trump wins or loses. If there is a rebuilding of the party, as opposed to an ongoing reinvention, we don’t know when that will commence. If it is a rebuilding, on what grounds do the NeverTrump forces think it will be rebuilt?...
But it all feels like it happened so far away. At such a great distance from where it all began. One minute, the Mighty St. Reagan was 70 feet tall, tearing down the Berlin Wall single-handedly as it were nothing. The next minute, a living YouTube comment section wearing a dead orangutan on its head was being borne on the shoulders of a great mob of weirdos who wore Reagan tee-shirts while systematically smashing every single precious Reagan icon that adorned the St. Ronald Reagan Tomb and Gift Shoppe. It made no sense!
TV producers were all sure he’d die on their show. They weren’t for Mr. Trump. By showing him they were revealing him: Look at this fatuous dope, see through him! They knew he’d quickly enough say something unforgivable, and if he said it on their air he died on their show! They took him down with the question! It was only after a solid six months of his not dying that they came to have qualms. They now understood they were helping him. Nothing he says is unforgivable to his supporters! Or, another way to put it, his fans would forgive anything so long as he promised to be what they want him to be, a human bomb that will explode by timer under a bench in Lafayette Park and take out all the people but leave the monuments standing.
It must be scary down there, among the little people, running this way and that, yelling things that are very rude and waving signs that are poorly spelled.

Sad and scary and hard to understand. Very hard.  Where did all these unwashed peasants come from with their large pores and old cars? Why are they so mad?  Do I know anyone who can go down and talk to them in the language of their people and find out what all the fuss is about?  And is my emergency cache of Beefeaters still intact?

So many imponderables.

So many unknown unknowns.

8 comments:

RUKidding said...

"TV producers were all sure he’d die on their show."

Drinking too much hooch wid dem pills, Dame Noonington is wrong again. I'm unclear what game the Media Barons were playing, other than: let's make as much dough-si-dough on this here dog 'n pony show.

I doubt the Media Barons give a rat's patoot who's Team Leader of the USA. They'll buy off whoever gets the jawb. Trump? Clinton? All the same to them.

Trump apparently was ratings gold - well when that's all that the public was given to watch, uh, er, I guess that's how one cranks up the ratings. But I guess they all made money offa Trump's one man band, and here we are.

Dame Nooners bloviating from her exalted perch proves once again that pills 'n booze don't result in insight, erudition or anything worth reading.

trgahan said...

I've learned two things about the conservative courtier class since last Monday:

1) They know Trump is going to lose and it is probably going to be by embarrassing margins. Like Romney/Ryan in 2012, the sound and fury of Republican primaries will turn to a whisper on the national stage. Like NFL dome teams, the media will pump in artificial crowd noise to try and keep up the horse race charade for profit; however..

2)for national media personalities backing Trump is career suicide; so we get these "Dude, where's my Republican Party?" articles and hold this entire election as arms length here on out to preserve careers.

3) However, no one will jump the conservative/both sider media gravy train because northern Virginia has a high cost of living and first class is the only way to travel between DC and NYC.

Robt said...

Peggy N's liquid oblivion scribblings of flowery words attest to her real talent. Which is imagination.
This no one realized, the anti establishment concoction when the GOP establishment is running 17, yes Seventeen candidates for the GOP nomination?

Utter arrogant intoxication deployed on its base.

The play book they ran on Romney was a ?never Romney light campaign. Which Newt and others showed the negative photos of Romney's colonoscopy.
The strategy designed to discharge smoke in front of the mirrors for the base.
The RNC accepted Trump tto the GOP club to run as a candidate. Don;t fool yourself as the rise of the so called Tea Party had on many.
Trump is intentional. The outsider game is just that. A ruse of a game.

Think,
Why would the GOP run an anti Trump campaign against him within their own club they let him into?
Using Ted Cruz as the alternative? The despised Ted Cruz?
It provides conservatives something to be against. Even within their own party. They must be against something, so the hate can arouse them to get out and vote.
But Peggy must avoid this and any other republican indiscretions and it seems if she sets her goal to get to the worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle. She accomplished something.

dinthebeast said...

"We don’t know what’s coming in 2016, or what happens to the GOP if Mr. Trump wins or loses."
OK Peggers, I'll tell you. What's coming is the ugliest election in our history, the gambit being that if Trump can make it ugly enough, it will suppress the turnout enough for a Republican to win.
If Trump wins, many bad things will happen, not the least of which is four (or FSM help us, eight) more lost years when nothing was done about climate change, something we will be affected by for far longer than even the horrible, horrible Republicans he will install in positions of power and responsibility. The country will survive it, just as it did the reign of W, but many citizens will not survive it because their health insurance was taken away... oops, I fucked up, you said "what happens to the gop" not "what happens". OK, if he wins the gop will develop a peculiar form of amnesia in the mad scramble for jobs in the administration and all of the think tanks will go on overdrive trying to come up with new ways to kiss Trump's ass, the better to capitalize on the opportunity to infiltrate the government and continue their agenda of tearing down the last century's social progress.
If he loses, out will come the familiar old "true Scotsman" fallacy, just like it does every fucking time they lose the presidency, which sadly, is about all they ever lose these days, and a brand new vintage '90s program of obstruction and sedition will seamlessly supplant the one they came up with back in '09 at the beginning of history...

-Doug in Oakland

























Robt said...

You are on to something about the uglier the '16 election. The more it turns off voters.
People voted """For Something""" with Obama. They were high numbers.

Trump Can have a negative effect that people decide to tune out.
And yes, this can lead to not voting.

Hutchman said...

St. Ronald - "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Drumpf - We're gonna build a big beautiful fuckin' wall!"
Is this irony or has that definition also been changed to protect the moranic?

Unknown said...

These lyrics seem so apt.

When you woke up this morning
Everything was gone
By half past ten your head was going
Ding-dong ringin' like a bell
From your head down to your toes
Like some voice tryin' to tell you
There's somethin' you should know
Last night you was flyin' but today you're so low
Ain't it times like these
Makes you wonder if you'll ever know
The meaning of things as they appear to the others
Wives, husbands, mothers
Fathers, sisters and brothers
Don't you wish you didn't function
Don't you wish you didn't think
Beyond the next paycheck and the next little drink
Well, you do so make up your mind to go on
'Cause when you woke up this mornin'
Ev'rything you had was gone.


Read more: A3 (Alabama 3) - Woke Up This Morning Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Unknown said...

"The next minute, a living YouTube comment section wearing a dead orangutan on its head was being borne on the shoulders of a great mob of weirdos who wore Reagan tee-shirts while systematically smashing every single precious Reagan icon that adorned the St. Ronald Reagan Tomb and Gift Shoppe. It made no sense!"

Truth-telling poetry of the ages, or temporal comedy gold?

Why not both?

Salute, driftglass!