To put things in the proper perspective, it might be useful to understand that we are not living through an "Apollo 11" election. This is not a smoothly-run exercise in applied expertise -- a rendezvous with destiny that will be watched with pride by people around the world.
No. with the nomination of Donald J. Trump as the Republican standard-bearer, this has become the "Apollo 13" election.
This has become an honest-to-god, disaster-in-space election because the GOP has finally done what they have been trying to do for 30 years: inflict such catastrophic damage on our democracy that the entire America experiment in self-government in now at risk of failure.
But failure is not an option, which is why this time, history will measure our capacity for leadership not by the first footprints the Obama campaign leaves on an alien world, but by how skillfully the Clinton campaign can pilot our crippled craft back to Earth without getting us all killed.
13 comments:
I've long held that Saint RWR, after realizing he could not "fix" government, cut the brakelines, stripped reverse then welded the throttle WFO and calmly took us into the event horizon.
Any success since has been limited to not careening into the abyss.
Even if progress does not gain one single inch over 8 years of a Clinton presidency, this is preferable to disaster. When the oxygen tank stirred and the thingamabob blew, the mission's success was no longer defined as landing on the moon and doing some experiments, success became averting disaster and landing Apollo 13 back safely on earth. The upper bounding constraint on what defines success for a Clinton presidency is similarly limited, that's not a bad analogy.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank R. Nixon, R. Reagan, Bush and Bush for destroying our global reputation.
Analogies well done. Congratulations to all.
Interesting poser.
But the use of Moon landing Government fakery, the liberal hollywood in cahoots with democrats to pull the wooly eyebrows over the sheeple is preposterous. As fake as the right denies science, birth certificates and elements of racism existing.
It assured the origination of our saviors who created the righteous John Birch Society.
That has been a guiding laser beacon for every conservative from then to now.
The liberals went to all this extreme of fakery of the moon landing to hide what they had in Area 51.
What truly is interesting is, how that landing imprinted a moment of reflection for all Earthlings to pause in what we are capable outside of division and destruction.
If we choose to.
The largest share of this Epic Fail lands right at the feet of Richard Milhous Nixon and his odious Southern Strategy. Of course, Nixon's proteges have been behind the scenes throwing the monkey wrenches glibly, all whilst making fortunes for their own good selves. The list is lengthy of the crooks involved but include such "luminaries" as that Dick Cheney, Roger Aisles (now kicked out of Fox for his sexual sleaziness run amok), Henry Kissinger (still kicking around), Paul Manafort (now under scrutiny for his dirty dealings in Ukraine), now deceased Lee Atwater (who recanted the Southern Strategy on his death bed), and others ... all leading up to today.
Donald Trump is the logical outcome of what Nixon's protege's have wrought... all done knowingly and with malice aforethought. That these greedy sleazebags were somehow caught unawares by an even bigger, greedier charlatan and major Con artist provides some very slim cold comfort in this dreary, embarrassing, shameful "campaign."
Idiotic actions follow ridiculous behavior. Following 100% wrong 100% of the time Bloody Bill Kristol starbursts over the Tundra Trash is a direct line to this worthless POS garbage posturing as someone ready to be the leader of the United States. The GOP should bow its collective bloody heads in abject shame, but I certainly don't expect that to happen any time soon. If anything, once Clinton is fairly elected, we'll all be treated to more of the same doubling down, obstruction and worse. While I am amply willing to agree that the Democratic party has it's problems and is far from perfect, I've just had it with the GOP.
The GOP's crooked criminal venal disgusting behavior has severely tarnished our nation and our image world-wide. Obama has to deal with global leaders, attempting to reassure them that we haven't simply lost our frigging minds here. Trump postures and wheezes about "making America great again." What a monumental fuck up he is. All he has accomplished is making us look like monumentally stupid idiots who have some kind of a death wish. And no, Trump will NOT make us safer from anyone or anything. Trump is making us less safe than ever before from his inflamed inciting racist bigoted rhetoric.
I've never been a huge fan of either Clinton, but for the love of all that's sane and holy, Hillary is beyond a doubt the only choice at this time. And I say that as someone who has voted Green in the past as a protest vote (I live in a blue state, so sue me).
This madness has Got. To. Stop.
Sadly even GOP voters who are now madly distancing themselves from Trump, and who are likely not going to vote for him, will eagerly revert to their anti-Democratic party ways in a NY second on November 9. They should learn a lesson and know better, but I hold out no hope that these citizens are capable of any self-reflection and any ability to truck in reality and any ability to change. Too bad.
Small difference. Apollo 13 wasn't a deliberate attempt to destroy some astronauts and the space program.
Regarding Apollo 11.
Some years ago, I was an assistant prosecutor in Washington, DC. It was then the practice of the police department with domestic disputes and neighbor fracases to set up a "hearing" with someone in the prosecutor's office, have everyone come down to the office, and let the DA figure out who, if anyone should be charged.
One evening, someone parked in front of someone else’s house, words were exchanged about parking places, and eventually the whole neighborhood was out in the street involved in a giant melee which drew many cop cars.
Naturally, they dumped it on our desk, specifically me, to straighten out.
A couple of days after the incident, the police had gathered everyone for me into a large conference room in the courthouse.
I think there were maybe 50 people involved all together.
I sat down, flipped out my legal pad and started going around the room trying to get everyone's name and story straight.
Then it suddenly hit me.
ME: “When do you say this happened?”
COP: “Sunday night around 10:45.”
ME: “That was when a man was walking on the moon for the first time ever ON LIVE TELEVISION! Didn’t anyone see that?”
Several participants allowed as to how they might have heard about it, but they weren’t sure it was a “real thing”.
So, yeah, nothing in this country surprises me.
Agreeing with RUkidding, I also harbor little hope that Repubs will learn anything should they receive a drubbing on Nov 8th. They'll likely still hold the House, so that will give them the ability to have Gowdy/Issa/name-your-republican-asshole investigate Hillary ad infinitum.
Furthermore, I think things are going to get way worse before we even get to the election. The Clinton Foundation, Hillary's health - whatever they can dream up - will get serious consideration and some validation from the MSM. Desperation on the part of GOP? Sure. Won't stop them from trying, though.
As though we don't have enough to worry about, I note that Trump's sign up page for "election observers" is still operational. No longer linked from the Trump home page after He, Trump got blow back on it a couple of weeks ago. However, a quick Google for "Trump Election Observer" goes right to it. You can bet Crazy Uncle Liberty has had it emailed to him. I can easily picture the Tea Party yahoo from my health club - who wanted to lift weights with his loaded 9 mil strapped to his thigh a few years ago - just itching to be an election observer in the Open-Carry state of Wisconsin. Particularly east of here, in Racine. You know, where Those People (nearly half AAs & Latinos) are going to vote 5 or 10 times apiece for the Dems.
It can still get worse. Much worse.
If the Apollo 13 analogy is apt, it's not because a Trumpian saboteur undermined the mission, or that our only hope today lies with Clinton's piloting skills. The key to understanding the failure/success of Apollo 13 and American elections is literally in this quote from Driftglass' post.
"the entire America experiment in self-government in now at risk of failure."
Auto-correct is at fault. On Apollo 13, one small malfunction led to a series of computer generated mishaps. It took non-codeable human intelligence to bring the crew back alive.
In my case, nearly every time I type the word 'is' it gets changed to either 'if' (I'm not tentative) or 'us' (I'm not sociable), but if in my haste I make a typo or grammatical error, nothing. It sits there with a blank look on its face, a useless sycophant or an ungrateful servant secretly enjoying me look stupid.
The irony is, one fix for our broken elections IS codeable (is that a word?). Districting should be done with a computer algorithm. Mostly though, it requires humans being both objective and loving.
Regardless of his intentions all along, Trump (and at least 14 other primary candidates attempts) proved the right's voters are so far gone (and so rabid for a White Male Avenging Savior) that, as of 2016, a candidate does not need much money or electoral machine infrastructure to capture the GOP nomination and take it to the November election.
It is an ironic twist in our post-Citizens United world. Just when conservative billionaires turned our elections over to the highest bidder that have turned insignificant House seats into multi-million dollar contests....the price of the GOP's top position has been discounted 75%.
Romney will likely be the last "traditional" Republican Presidential Campaign for the foreseeable future and the fall out will, regardless of the media's denial, prevent any return to "normal."
Good evening, Mr. Glass.
Apollo 13? The one with the mind-controlling alien parasite? Oh, wait. That was Apollo EIGHTEEN....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_18_(film)
What? I was born in '78. As far as I'm concerned, all this sh*t's before my time.
Though, the Republican Party as the Nostromo from "Alien" might be an interesting analogy. Donald Trump's a chest-burster. The media keeps him around because they want to use him for their own purposes.
Be seeing you.
To carry the analogy further:
Republican Establishment: EECOM, is this an instrumentation problem, or are we looking at real power loss here?
Both-Siderist Pundits: It's, it's reading a quadruple failure. That can't happen! It's, it's got to be instrumentation.
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