the Great American Stupid
Donald Trump Just Stopped Being Funny
When reporters confronted Trump, he hadn't yet heard about the incident. At first, he said, "That would be a shame." But right after, he went on:
The thing is, even as Donald Trump said and did horrible things during this year's incredible run at the White House, most sane people took solace in the fact that he could never win.
In fact, most veteran political observers figured that the concrete impact of Trump's candidacy would be limited in the worst case to destroying the Republican Party as a mainstream political force.
That made Trump's run funny, campy even, like a naughty piece of pornographic performance art. After all, what's more obscene than pissing on the presidency? It seemed even more like camp because the whole shtick was fronted by a veteran reality TV star who might even be in on the joke, although of course the concept was funnier if he wasn't.
Trump had the whole country rubbernecking as this preposterous Spaulding Smails caricature of a spoiled rich kid drove the family Rolls (our illustrious electoral process in this metaphor) off the road into a ditch. It was brilliant theater for a while, but the ugliness factor has gotten out of control.
Trump is probably too dumb to realize it, or maybe he isn't, but he doesn't need to win anything to become the most dangerous person in America. He can do plenty of damage just by encouraging people to be as uninhibited in their stupidity as he is.
Trump is striking a chord with people who are feeling the squeeze in a less secure world and want to blame someone – the government, immigrants, political correctness, "incompetents," "dummies," Megyn Kelly, whoever – for their problems.
Karl Rove and his acolytes mined a lot of the same resentments to get Republicans elected over the years, but the difference is that Trump's political style encourages people to do more to express their anger than just vote. The key to his success is a titillating message that those musty old rules about being polite and "saying the right thing" are for losers who lack the heart, courage and Trumpitude to just be who they are.
His signature moment in a campaign full of them was his exchange in the first debate with Fox's Kelly. She asked him how anyone with a history of calling women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals" could win a general election against a female candidate like Hillary Clinton.
I've been challenged by so many people," Trump answered. "I frankly don't have time for political correctness. And to be honest with you, the country doesn't have time either….We don't win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico….We lose to everybody."
On the surface, Kelly was just doing her job as a journalist, throwing Trump's most outrageous comments back at him and demanding an explanation.
But on another level, she was trying to bring Trump to heel. The extraction of the humiliating public apology is one of the media's most powerful weapons. Someone becomes famous, we dig up dirt on the person, we rub it in his or her nose, and then we demand that the person get down on bended knee and beg forgiveness.
The Clintons' 1992 joint interview on 60 Minutes was a classic example, as was Anthony Weiner's prostration before Andrew Breitbart and Chris Christie's 107-minute marathon apologia after Bridgegate. The subtext is always the same: If you want power in this country, you must accept the primacy of the press. It's like paying the cover at the door of the world's most exclusive club.
Trump wouldn't pay the tab. Not only was he not wrong for saying those things, he explained, but holding in thoughts like that is bad for America. That's why we don't win anymore, why we lose to China and to Mexico (how are we losing to Mexico again?). He was saying that hiding forbidden thoughts about women or immigrants or whoever isn't just annoying, but bad for America.
It's not exactly telling people to get out there and beat people with metal rods. But when your response to news that a couple of jackasses just invoked your name when they beat the crap out of a homeless guy is to salute your "passionate" followers who "love this country," you've gone next-level.
The political right in America has been flirting with dangerous ideas for a while now, particularly on issues involving immigrants and minorities. But in the last few years the rhetoric has gotten particularly crazy.
Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert proposed using troops and ships of war to stop an invasion of immigrant children, whom he described as a 28 Days Later-style menace. "We don't even know all of the diseases, and how extensive the diseases are," he said.
"A lot of head lice, a lot of scabies," concurred another Texas congressman, Blake Farenthold.
"I'll do anything short of shooting them," promised Mo Brooks, a congressman from the enlightened state of Alabama.
Then there's Iowa's Steve King, who is unusually stupid even for a congressman. He not only believes a recent Supreme Court decision on gay marriage allows people to marry inanimate objects, but also believes the EPA may have intentionally spilled three million gallons of toxic waste into Colorado's Animas river in order to get Superfund money.
Late last year, King asked people to "surround the president's residence" in response to Barack Obama's immigration policies. He talked about putting "boots on the ground" and said "everything is on the table" in the fight against immigrants.
So all of this was in the ether even before Donald Trump exploded into the headlines with his "They're rapists" line, and before his lunatic, Game of Thrones idea to build a giant wall along the southern border. But when Trump surged in the polls on the back of this stuff, it caused virtually all of the candidates to escalate their anti-immigrant rhetoric.
For example, we just had Ben Carson – who seems on TV like a gentle, convivial doctor who's just woken up from a nice nap – come out and suggest that he's open to using drone strikes on U.S. soil against undocumented immigrants. Bobby Jindal recently came out and said mayors in the so-called "sanctuary cities" should be arrested when undocumented immigrants commit crimes. Scott Walker and Marco Rubio have both had to change their positions favoring paths to citizenship as a result of the new dynamic.
Meanwhile, Rick Santorum, polling at a brisk zero percent, joined Jindal and Lindsey Graham in jumping aboard with Trump's insane plan to toss the 14th Amendment out the window and revoke the concept of birthright citizenship, thereby extending the war on immigrants not just to children, but babies.
All of this bleeds out into the population. When a politician says dumb thing X, it normally takes ‘Murica about two days to start flirting publicly with X + way worse.
We saw that earlier this week, when Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson blew up Twitter by calling for undocumented immigrants to become "property of the state" and put into "compelled labor." When a caller challenged the idea, Mickelson answered, "What's wrong with slavery?"
Why there's suddenly this surge of hatred for immigrants is sort of a mystery. Why Donald Trump, who's probably never even interacted with an undocumented immigrant in a non-commercial capacity, in particular should care so much about this issue is even more obscure. (Did he trip over an immigrant on his way to the Cincinnati housing development his father gave him as a young man?)
Most likely, immigrants are just collateral damage in Trump's performance art routine, which is an absurd ritualistic celebration of the coiffed hotshot endlessly triumphing over dirty losers and weaklings.
Trump isn't really a politician, of course. He's a strongman act, a ridiculous parody of a Nietzschean superman. His followers get off on watching this guy with (allegedly) $10 billion and a busty mute broad on his arm defy every political and social convention and get away with it.
People are tired of rules and tired of having to pay lip service to decorum. They want to stop having to watch what they say and think and just get "crazy," as Thomas Friedman would put it.
Trump's campaign is giving people permission to do just that. It's hard to say this word in conjunction with such a sexually unappealing person, but his message is a powerful aphrodisiac. Fuck everything, fuck everyone. Fuck immigrants and fuck their filthy lice-ridden kids. And fuck you if you don't like me saying so.
Those of us who think polls and primaries and debates are any match for that are pretty naive. America has been trending stupid for a long time. Now the stupid wants out of its cage, and Trump is urging it on. There are a lot of ways this can go wrong, no matter who wins in 2016.
Trump is striking a chord with people who are feeling the squeeze in a less secure world and want to blame someone – the government, immigrants, political correctness, "incompetents," "dummies," Megyn Kelly, whoever – for their problems.
Karl Rove and his acolytes mined a lot of the same resentments to get Republicans elected over the years, but the difference is that Trump's political style encourages people to do more to express their anger than just vote. The key to his success is a titillating message that those musty old rules about being polite and "saying the right thing" are for losers who lack the heart, courage and Trumpitude to just be who they are.
His signature moment in a campaign full of them was his exchange in the first debate with Fox's Kelly. She asked him how anyone with a history of calling women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals" could win a general election against a female candidate like Hillary Clinton.
I've been challenged by so many people," Trump answered. "I frankly don't have time for political correctness. And to be honest with you, the country doesn't have time either….We don't win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico….We lose to everybody."
On the surface, Kelly was just doing her job as a journalist, throwing Trump's most outrageous comments back at him and demanding an explanation.
But on another level, she was trying to bring Trump to heel. The extraction of the humiliating public apology is one of the media's most powerful weapons. Someone becomes famous, we dig up dirt on the person, we rub it in his or her nose, and then we demand that the person get down on bended knee and beg forgiveness.
The Clintons' 1992 joint interview on 60 Minutes was a classic example, as was Anthony Weiner's prostration before Andrew Breitbart and Chris Christie's 107-minute marathon apologia after Bridgegate. The subtext is always the same: If you want power in this country, you must accept the primacy of the press. It's like paying the cover at the door of the world's most exclusive club.
Trump wouldn't pay the tab. Not only was he not wrong for saying those things, he explained, but holding in thoughts like that is bad for America. That's why we don't win anymore, why we lose to China and to Mexico (how are we losing to Mexico again?). He was saying that hiding forbidden thoughts about women or immigrants or whoever isn't just annoying, but bad for America.
It's not exactly telling people to get out there and beat people with metal rods. But when your response to news that a couple of jackasses just invoked your name when they beat the crap out of a homeless guy is to salute your "passionate" followers who "love this country," you've gone next-level.
The political right in America has been flirting with dangerous ideas for a while now, particularly on issues involving immigrants and minorities. But in the last few years the rhetoric has gotten particularly crazy.
Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert proposed using troops and ships of war to stop an invasion of immigrant children, whom he described as a 28 Days Later-style menace. "We don't even know all of the diseases, and how extensive the diseases are," he said.
"A lot of head lice, a lot of scabies," concurred another Texas congressman, Blake Farenthold.
"I'll do anything short of shooting them," promised Mo Brooks, a congressman from the enlightened state of Alabama.
Then there's Iowa's Steve King, who is unusually stupid even for a congressman. He not only believes a recent Supreme Court decision on gay marriage allows people to marry inanimate objects, but also believes the EPA may have intentionally spilled three million gallons of toxic waste into Colorado's Animas river in order to get Superfund money.
Late last year, King asked people to "surround the president's residence" in response to Barack Obama's immigration policies. He talked about putting "boots on the ground" and said "everything is on the table" in the fight against immigrants.
So all of this was in the ether even before Donald Trump exploded into the headlines with his "They're rapists" line, and before his lunatic, Game of Thrones idea to build a giant wall along the southern border. But when Trump surged in the polls on the back of this stuff, it caused virtually all of the candidates to escalate their anti-immigrant rhetoric.
For example, we just had Ben Carson – who seems on TV like a gentle, convivial doctor who's just woken up from a nice nap – come out and suggest that he's open to using drone strikes on U.S. soil against undocumented immigrants. Bobby Jindal recently came out and said mayors in the so-called "sanctuary cities" should be arrested when undocumented immigrants commit crimes. Scott Walker and Marco Rubio have both had to change their positions favoring paths to citizenship as a result of the new dynamic.
Meanwhile, Rick Santorum, polling at a brisk zero percent, joined Jindal and Lindsey Graham in jumping aboard with Trump's insane plan to toss the 14th Amendment out the window and revoke the concept of birthright citizenship, thereby extending the war on immigrants not just to children, but babies.
All of this bleeds out into the population. When a politician says dumb thing X, it normally takes ‘Murica about two days to start flirting publicly with X + way worse.
We saw that earlier this week, when Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson blew up Twitter by calling for undocumented immigrants to become "property of the state" and put into "compelled labor." When a caller challenged the idea, Mickelson answered, "What's wrong with slavery?"
Why there's suddenly this surge of hatred for immigrants is sort of a mystery. Why Donald Trump, who's probably never even interacted with an undocumented immigrant in a non-commercial capacity, in particular should care so much about this issue is even more obscure. (Did he trip over an immigrant on his way to the Cincinnati housing development his father gave him as a young man?)
Most likely, immigrants are just collateral damage in Trump's performance art routine, which is an absurd ritualistic celebration of the coiffed hotshot endlessly triumphing over dirty losers and weaklings.
Trump isn't really a politician, of course. He's a strongman act, a ridiculous parody of a Nietzschean superman. His followers get off on watching this guy with (allegedly) $10 billion and a busty mute broad on his arm defy every political and social convention and get away with it.
People are tired of rules and tired of having to pay lip service to decorum. They want to stop having to watch what they say and think and just get "crazy," as Thomas Friedman would put it.
Trump's campaign is giving people permission to do just that. It's hard to say this word in conjunction with such a sexually unappealing person, but his message is a powerful aphrodisiac. Fuck everything, fuck everyone. Fuck immigrants and fuck their filthy lice-ridden kids. And fuck you if you don't like me saying so.
Those of us who think polls and primaries and debates are any match for that are pretty naive. America has been trending stupid for a long time. Now the stupid wants out of its cage, and Trump is urging it on. There are a lot of ways this can go wrong, no matter who wins in 2016.
Ah Matt Taibbi telling it like it is.... That's what you want isn't it William? Louman? someone to tell it like it is.................................
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletePlease! The left is nothing but associated organizations of institutional, anti-patriotic, race, class, sex, environmental and secular bullies that work tirelessly and quite vocally to shunt any discussion by anyone who disputes their position and yes... people are getting damn tired of being told that if you are proud of America, think hard work is a virtue, believe America is still a sovereign nation with borders to be protected and most especially if you be leave in life, marriage or family, you are ordered to ‘check your privilege and shut up’.
ReplyDeleteHis comments are laughable if not ironic as they show the intolerance and downright hypocrisy of the left.
*When reporters confronted Trump, he hadn't yet heard about the incident. At first, he said, "That would be a shame." But right after, he went on: "I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again. But they are very passionate. I will say that."
Interesting we didn’t see this kind of arm waving when this president marched with the New Black Panther Party in Selma in 2007, had his justice department drop charges against them over voter intimidation and said nothing when they publicly put a bounty on Zimmerman’s head.
*That made Trump's run funny, campy even, like a naughty piece of pornographic performance art. After all, what's more obscene than pissing on the presidency?
Well, some folks would find the president not denouncing the reemerging public display of anti-Christian ‘Piss-Christ’ from appearing in a gallery expedition nor telling people about his disdain for publicly funding the creation of such... art.
*Trump is striking a chord with people who are feeling the squeeze in a less secure world and want to blame someone – the government, immigrants, political correctness, "incompetents," "dummies," Megyn Kelly, whoever – for their problems.
I have long said that the incompetence of our career politicians and the government that they steer is at the root of much of our ‘less secure world’.... that we are a sovereign nation deserving of secure borders, have just said my piece about political correctness and we will address Megyn Kelly post haste.
*His signature moment in a campaign full of them was his exchange in the first debate with Fox's Kelly. She asked him how anyone with a history of calling women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals" could win ...”
Didn’t see where Tiabbi mentions Trumps successful daughter saying that Trump was blunt and was an equal opportunity offender. Nor did I see where he mentioned the fact that the US federal government has spent more money funding Origami condom and fat lesbian studies than the entirety of the Benghazi investigation, but I did see where he called Trumps partner a ‘busty mute broad’.
I like Tiabbi’s assertion that someone should be apologetic and contrite to the media... who does he think the media is; they are suppose to report the news not pass blessings..
He is right though in this comment “All of this bleeds out into the population. When a politician says dumb thing X, it normally takes ‘Murica about two days to start flirting publicly with X + way worse.”
So when is the left going to stop spreading the hate-mongering and intolerance to the very impressionable people of America just because people won’t acquiesce to their opinions on just about everything.
Matt Taibbi is the kinda reporter who gets about half of a sensational story right, then insults the intelligence of his (seemingly gullible) readers by adding extraneous garbage and outright lies. A person who, as the editor of a Moscow paper, marched into the local offices of the Times and slammed a pie filled with horse semen into the face of a reporter HE deemed a “hack.” But then again, what kind of hit piece about a Republican... any republican would a liberal expect as they soak up the ribald, loudly antagonistic voice of a writer who is, in his own words, “full of outrage.”
Stupid wants out of the cage and Trump is urging it on. No truer words have been spoken this political season.
ReplyDeleteThis may surprise you TS, but I have to agree with this statement,
ReplyDelete"His comments are laughable if not ironic as they show the intolerance and downright hypocrisy of the left."
I've read some of his stuff before, and I've never really been a fan. He can be entertaining, but he both seems mocking and genuinely annoyed that a guy like Trump can't be brought to heel by the media, a media that Taibi is a part of. He's a rock thrower supreme. I don't know that I agree he adds outright lies, but I agree he's the type that can't resist blocking the reader from coming to their own conclusions, which is why I also don't like Michael Moore. I watched Breitbart on Bill Mahers show before Breitbart died, and he had that same look of smug, Fuck You, on his face that Taibi always seems to have when he is on TV as well.
I'm tending to guess, perhaps wrongly, that you are in that group of people who believes that only left leaning writers do this and that the leftist agenda is so loud and so deeply entrenched that it drowns out all reason and liberty. I see it cut both ways. The media, like everything else these days, is driven by a profit motive. While Taibi rails, he is also getting paid bank to write...something......about Trump.
While Taibi rails, he is also getting paid bank to write...something......about Trump.
DeleteIsn't that just about what journalism has come down too? I here a lot about greed and what. One would suspect that a group of well healed journalist who were more about integrity than selling out to corporate media could get together and do some honest journalism... if it wasn't for the money. I mean, Ben Swann did it and he mortgaged his house and sourced donations from his listeners to do it....
As for anyone of a conservative leaning nature appearing on a program like Mahers show.... you best be prepared and you best bring your ‘A’ game. I read an article some time ago about how in the Daily Kos about how, before he died, Andrew appeared on the show. Kos took the view that Maher had rattled him. Bill had asked him some inane question and Andrew started babbling. “Comedy show... comedy show... comedy show”... the audience thought he had flipped out... actually he was taking the piss out of a stupid question. You go in front of Mahers or incur the wrath of the likes of Megyn Kelly... you best be prepared.
I watched the actual show, I didn't read about it. I'll draw my own conclusions.
DeleteThe journalists these days are giving the market what it wants. This is paraphrasing John Galt, but essentially, we shouldn't blame the car that brought us to somewhere we claim we don't want to be. I want to be clear that I'm not blaming the desire for profit for shitty, partisan media, the profit is only the reward for giving the market what it wants. The bigger issue is that so many who consume media don't want to be given a set of facts to draw their own conclusions from, and they want that extra bit of emotional entertainment. They want their anger and their viewpoint validated, and whether they are left or right doesn't really matter. Collectively, they all combine to create the same outcome.
Sorry for that screwed up sentence... I just reread it and it took me three times to figure out what I said....
DeleteSoooo... you then have no problems passing out antibiotics until we no longer have the ability to fight off an infection? I mean that's what you are saying about doctors who give people shitty treatment after promising to give them the truth.... I don't know that I necessarily believe that we can blame a gullible audience for falling for the sensationalism... as far back as Rowen and Martin's Laugh In the shock jocks of relativism worked at dulling most of our senses where the fairly benign whiz of the truth puts people to sleep and they miss the message anyway.
Not sure I followed that connection on antibiotics.
DeleteBy your thought process, because we are paying for the sensationalism that journalists provide rather than the truth they they are suppose to deliver, then we can excuse doctors for providing patients with antibiotics just because the patient insists... regardless of what it does to society in the long run. Somewhere in all of this is personal ethics and the whole dumbing down of society can't just be laid strictly at the feet of the audience (see my comments to Mick - Perhaps the brown wave will stem the red tide )... they have been conditioned over years of exposure to people like Brian Williams who I thought was a Walter Cronkite figure... a teller of truth..
DeleteWhy because Maher and Kelly might ask you a hard off the wall question. TS I think you miss a point here. Would you only have the media ask a soft scripted question and call that the truth. So you better bring your "A" game? Hell yes you better. You better have your ducks in a row because somewhere sometime someone is going to Get cha with a "Gotcha" question, which is exactly what Mayer did to Brietbart. He had no answer or not one he could state so he started his "comedy" show antics. Kelly asked Trump about his comments about women, well documented comments and he went after the poser of the question instead of trying to justify his past comments. That my friend is journalists going after the truth, regardless of political leanings, and that is what you profess to want.
DeleteOn the contrary TS, I am merely acknowledging the mechanism. I feel like there is an inconsistency in some people. When it comes to an issue like abortion, they want to blame slutty women for flopping their legs open like whores (men never face such scrutiny), but when it comes to individuals choosing to drown themselves in an avalanche of biased media, it's the fault of the outlet selling the media. Ayn Rand one provided a formula for assessing contradictions.
DeleteAs for the antibiotics, no, I don't approve of giving them out like candy, and hopefully I will practice in an environment that won't give them out so easy. But, I acknowledge that many doctors will write because the patient, AKA the customer will go somewhere else if they don't get what they want. That is purely the result of a marketplace mindset wherein everything is seen as just a product to consume, which is exactly how we run our healthcare. As for the media, like I said, they are just giving the market what it wants and it has been a bad thing for us. The biased consumers who consume only biased media, IMO, are not helpless. They make a choice to never think objectively.
First of all, I don’t know about you but I was informed quite emphatically that if I created it... I would take care of the child... Period. If she wanted to get married, I would marry her and if not, I would support my child. I had pretty reasonable understanding of the plumbing and the myth of stork BEFORE I was a candidate for fatherhood ... none of that wisdom delivered by a school teacher. As I got older, there was a definite trend in law enforcement to ... garnish wages, threaten employment and name and shame in the news papers ‘Dead Beat Dads’. I will certainly admit that women are much more proximate to the problem but if starting sex education in the 3rd or 4th grade doesn’t get it done and they a have no compulsion to teach the sanctity or value of life... either we have a teaching problem or we have a comprehension problem. They say that parenting is best done when both parents provide a united front in dealing with problems... do you think that a parent who... for instance, does not believe that gays are good for society, aren’t just a little bit undermined when the teacher says ...”don’t pay any attention to them, they don’t know what they are talking about”.
DeleteAs far as the media goes... I don’t know how you escape it when its on TV, in the movies, in music, on ads etc.... but I do know that the liberal... “come hither, we will take care of you and all of your needs” message plays well in the ear.....