Once upon a time, maybe it might have worked.
Maybe in 1982 or 1991 when some of them were just Bipartisan swingers. Libertarians Until Graduation. Just, y'know, Conservative-curious.
But it's 2016, and for any man or woman to have ridden the escalating, seditious lunacy of the Right through the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration and come out the other side rooting for Donald Fucking Trump, this is no longer a lifestyle choice.
This is a mental illness.
So when you read something like this extraordinary denunciation of Donald Trump embedded in The Atlantic's endorsement of Hillary Clinton -- a magazine which has only endorsed two other candidates for president in the last century and a half --
...Today, our position is similar to the one in which The Atlantic’s editors found themselves in 1964. We are impressed by many of the qualities of the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, even as we are exasperated by others, but we are mainly concerned with the Republican Party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump, who might be the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency....
Donald Trump, on the other hand, has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.
-- understand that the reason this erratic, secretive, conspiracy mongering racist stands triumphant at the head of the Party of Lincoln is because he perfectly reflects the heart and soul of millions and millions of meatheads in the Party of Lincoln.
There is no way around this fact, just as there is no reason to continue to deny that these people are just wired this way and will continue to grow ever more dangerously fucked-in-the-head until the day they die.
11 comments:
". . . he perfectly reflects the heart and soul of millions and millions of meatheads in the Party of Lincoln."
mene, mene, tekel, upharsin
It's taken long enough for this to be said "out loud." The meat heads didn't just "happen" bc of Trumps blatant NeoNazi white supremacist misogynistic xenophobia. Everything Trump stands for & blasts out is what the GOP has been all about at least in my lifetime. All of rightwing media, Hate Radio, & bs Christiany media mega church charlatans have worked overtime to make the authoritarian meatheads what they are today. It's by long range planning carefully enacted. Not by happenstance. Fuck em.
"...he appears not to read."
Have you ever considered thinking this about anyone, no matter how ignorant? It is an extraordinary condemnation; even your crazy wing-nut uncle reads. I posted this article from The Atlantic a day ago and it has been shared over and over again, because we enjoy reading, all of us.
"...he appears not to read." - man, that's cold.
Atlantic's unprotected kick to Trump's nuts is righteous. And well deserved.
Actually, "they" won't get more and more crazy and xenophobic until the day they die, only some of them will. To be more precise, the real hard-core Trumpites constitute 29% of voters overall, as measured in recent polling. That is horrible of course, because it means close to 38,000,000 of our people are clinically insane and desperately in need of serious therapy they will never receive or accept.
But, the rest of them are "Good Germans." You know, the ones who were never really that worried about the Jews, they just voted for Hitler for other reasons, like their desire to oppose the Socialists or because they thought Hitler was the "strong leader Germany needs." Hitler too, promised "so much winning, you will get sick of winning." And they did get mightily sick of it before the end.
But, after the war was lost, they all claimed "I was never a member of the Nazi party." If there are enough of those assholes to vote in Hitler, then of course everything falls apart. But, if they lose badly enough, they turn round, blame Hitler for losing the war and break with their Nazi comrades and pretend they were never a part of it.
That means that ultimately the overwhelming majority of the American population is redeemed or redeemable from the stain and sin of our history of racism. Some 11%-15% of Trump voters will eventually accept that we are living in a society where you don't scream "make me a taco bitch!" at small, middle aged Latina women in Phoenix who dare to protest the Donald. Who knows? Maybe they will ultimately come to accept that Black Lives really do matter.
Unfortunately, it's going to take a while. But, really what other choice is there for America? We can't have a race war, just to satisfy the lunatic fringe of morons who want the country to go back to 1953. And we're clearly not going to do that, at least we can all have some reason now to hope not.
I just watched a video of a John Lennon concert at Madison Square Garden in 1972, and during the encore, Yoko stood up and read from a sheet of paper a political speech about law and order and unrest on college campuses, and I was struck by how similar Nixon's shtick was to the stuff Trump is selling today, then she said "This is from Adolph Hitler, 1932"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ywUc8j5EmI
-Doug in Oakland
Only one critical point for the Atlantic.
Those millions and millions of hordes of meatheads do not read the Atlantic.
The attention span may allow to read a 5 word story title and one or two sentences from a Breitbart's web posting. Only if it promises to feed their hate. Other than that, the meathead hordes will not come in contact with their dreaded "mainstream media".
If they hear something via a burning bush voice on the radio. If the Atlantic story was read on the radio to them. To survive the reality, they would retreat to the only astion within their ability.
That would be, "Putting on the Pence". The face of DENIAL..............
What Cugel said.
I heard a great potential consultant gig for your Driftglass:
Listening to NPR (yeah,I know) yesterday and they interviewed 29 political science professors who apparently are having a hard time explaining this election to their students to the point they have employed the help of other professors.
Of course my own thought was is it really that hard to explain? or is it just hard to explain because you can't be truthful about Republicans?
A lot of blame should be placed squarely on the right-wing bullshit machine that's been operating for decades. The ugly racist and sexist smears have stained the political scene. Fox News, Limbaugh, Beck etc. gave birth to Trumpism.
If you need any convincing of what these people are, read Kurt Eichenwald's piece on what Trump supporters have done since he exposed all of the dangers of a Trump Presidency. This is truly getting frightening. What will these people do if Trump loses and starts whining how the election was rigged? Go out and shoot or beat up people? I predict people are going to die because of the monster the Republicans have created. Then what do we do as a country? I'm afraid we may be permanently scarred by this.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/vile-trump-supporters-threaten-the-kids-of-newsweek-reporter-who-exposed-his-shady-business-dealings/
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