Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Burn Baby Burn!

I don't care for Hillary Clinton. She's a poor candidate. She's bought, completely bought, like the majority of DC. It's telling that, given all of the amazingly disgusting and disturbing things Trump has said and done over the last 18 months, she's only up a dozen or so points AFTER a tape surfaces of him essentially bragging about his fame allowing him to sexually assault women without repercussion. A strong Democratic candidate would be up 20, maybe 25+ points right now. But I don't blame Hillary, or the Democratic party, for our impoverished choices this cycle.




WE, the voters, are the problem. WE voted for the members of our executive and legislative branches that have maneuvered the system in a masturbatory way and strengthened "the establishment". And we keep reelecting these numbnuts by chasing the political carrots they dangle in front of our noses during the election season. I've spent several election cycles telling folk that while they think their vote is "making a difference" regarding whatever usually lone issue takes them to the polls, all they're really doing is choosing which corporate interests our government will be serving for the duration of the term/payout. The democratic base, to their credit, at least made the effort to address the problem they created by strongly supporting Bernie Sanders. Minus a little behind the scenes hocus-pocus from the DNC he may have garnered the nomination. 


Now, before I start chasing rabbits while talking about political carrots, let's get to the meat of this post...

Donald Trump.


Those two proper nouns comprising that name are almost a post by themselves, but I don't want to dwell on him so much (he does plenty of that himself) as look at his message (if you want to call it that), his base, why his message fastens itself so perfectly and uniquely to the consciousness of his base, and the collateral damage - or perhaps rebirth - it's causing and will cause the GOP. It's kinda like the old joke, "Did you hear about the tornado that hit Wilkes County? It did 20 million dollars worth of home improvements."


My apologies, Wilkes County.


Quick comparison of the two candidates. Hillary is probably corrupt on some level(s), is a skilled liar, is somewhat amoral in pursuit of political power, and can't genuinely be trusted to follow through on her campaign promises. But, on her worst day, her most corrupt, dishonest, and amoral day, her intellect, political knowledge, and political qualification to handle the office of President can't be questioned. Questioning those things would bring your own intellect into question. They're undeniable.


Trump is corrupt on some level(s), is a skilled liar, is a narcissist, was initially only interested in a Presidential campaign to promote the Trump brand, has made fun of disabled people, mocked women, made disparaging remarks about minorities, and can't be trusted to be of the same mind from one sentence to the next, depending on whichever line of bullshit he's spewing. On his BEST day, he's not an intellectual by any stretch, he doesn't understand the Constitution, its use and protections, domestic or foreign policy, nuclear weapons and why we don't use them, can be baited with minutiae because of his epic ego/inferiority complex, and doesn't understand the purposes and limits of power of the three branches of our government. He also doesn't comprehend or implement Twitter etiquette any better than most 13 year olds. He's a goon who's not qualified, in ANY way other than being a natural-born citizen of necessary age, to handle the office of President. No rational person could argue otherwise.


If you had to choose one of the two, how jaded, ill-informed, and reckless would you have to be to choose Trump as Leader of the Free World? Well, let's have a look...


The Billy Bush tapes, combined with Trump's insolvent and rambling debate performances, have caused many of the rats of GOP leadership to start abandoning a sinking ship. Now that they see nothing less than a miracle bringing about a Trump win in a few weeks, they've decided to get all moral about him. Most decent people, people not eaten alive with hatred for "libtards", and people who actually value country and countrymen over political party would have watched him mock the disabled reporter a few months back, or mock Megyn Kelly's female cycle, or any number of other isolated incidents and quips, and said, "No way! Never, ever, never!!!" None of that was enough for his base. They loved him more. None of that was enough for the GOP leadership because they fear his base. They decided to play Russian Roulette long enough to see if he could actually win. Now that he appears headed for a sizable defeat, they're "offended" by his actions. They'd make a fine group of pussies for him to grab.


Many major religious leaders are playing the modern day Judas in continuing to support their political Messiah. Franklin Graham, James Dobson, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, and more, and all for nothing but 30 pieces of shaky Supreme Court silver, willing to bury their "Christian witness" in the Potter's Field. Another fine group of pussies.

It's just a trainwreck in slow motion, real time, and high speed all at once. I'm sitting here right now typing as Kellyanne Conway does her best Baghdad Bob impersonation in the background. I can't help but wonder what price, exactly, she demanded in exchange for her soul.


His base. Ai yi yi. They feel their culture slipping away. People of color are developing stronger voices and cultural influences. They lost the White House to a black man. A BLACK MAN! DEAR GOD!!! They don't understand the new sociopolitical ideas and pulse surrounding them, and they don't want to because they feel powerless. The problem is, they're powerless to stop it. Things are never going back to the good ole days when women and blacks were something less, and gays were merely unmentionables. Things are never going back to a society ruled exclusively by the Christian "ideals" which allowed women and minorities to be something less, and gays to be unmentionables. Never. Society is becoming more and more secular, and it isn't going to stop. What they don't want to accept is that society is becoming better for it. Better and better all the time. We could get better even faster yet...if certain sociopolitical deadweight could be shed allowing us to catch up to the rest of the world in areas like education, health care, and happiness.


I keep hearing people furthering this idea that a Trump vote is important because of the Supreme Court and keeping out the libtards. The whole idea there being Roe vs. Wade. The problem is the level of gullibility required to believe Roe vs. Wade is ever gonna be overturned. It's not gonna happen, people. That's the one political carrot that the GOP must dangle every election cycle. Gotta have it. Even Trump's dangled it, despite my suspicion he's paid for his share of abortions. It's the crown jewel of the commonalities and common enemies of the Trump base, the others being minority freeloaders on welfare, immigrants, Muslims, and gays. There can be slight movement on the latter four without losing them as a carrot. There can be NO movement on abortion. How did I reach this conclusion on abortion? Because just a few years back the GOP held all three branches of government, and did nothing, nothing, about abortion. They're more interested in you voting because of abortion than they are in ending abortion, and that's all there is to it. They've made abortion voters dead weight on the rest of the nation's sociopolitical yoke. And all of this makes the bewildering and towering assumption that Trump cares anything about conservative nominees, because he doesn't. Even he doesn't know what he is, other than an opportunist.


Then, there's the "basket of deplorables". The last thing Hillary should do is walk back that statement. In saying half of Trump's supporters fit into this basket, she was being overly illiberal. Let's do the math. Roughly 35-40% of Americans are Trump supporters. Let's say half would be somewhere between 15-20%. Hmmm. Ok, the alt-right, the KKK, and white supremacy groups have come out of the woodwork to gleefully endorse Trump, feeling he's given them a platform than no other modern Presidential candidate ever has. I mean outspoken support. We hadn't heard a peep out of David Duke for nearly 25 years until the Trump candidacy. Duke is plumb giddy about Trump's rhetoric. I'd say 5%, easy, of the white, rural populace, is authentically sympathetic to the ideas of these racist movements, even if not identifying directly with them. These people would qualify as deplorable. Another 5% is probably, at a minimum, somewhat sympathetic, freely using terms like n****r, wetback, sandn****r, et cetera. That's deplorable. Another 5% probably uses those epithets cautiously, in safe spaces, while passionately denying a racist bone in their body. That's deplorable. See how easy this is? We barely had to start and we're almost to half, and all we've covered is racism.


And now we're left with Donald Trump looking at a losing campaign, his fragile ego wrenching from the shrinking of his hands and genitalia and projecting the exhaust not just onto himself, but looking to suffocate the very party that nominated him. Scorching the earth like an actual psychopath. If he can't have it, NO ONE will. Declaring, via Twitter (lol - can't make this up), open war on the GOP. Burn, baby! Burn!


Many of his supporters see this war on the GOP "establishment" as a good thing. They don't understand that he'll be taking them down, too, and relegating them to the dustbin of political history, as a vote for Trump will conclusively put them on the wrong side of history. The GOP establishment isn't the problem, and hasn't been the problem for an entire generation. The GOP base is the problem. The establishment is its hostage. The base turned out en masse to vote for Trump in the primaries. In record numbers, in fact, which tells us that as extreme right as the GOP has become over the last 10 years, it wasn't crazy enough for these folk. They want batshit crazy. He's a reflection of who they are. His hateful rhetoric resonates with them, not only in unison with the objects of his rhetoric, but it strikes a deep chord of hatred of Hillary Clinton and all things "libtard" that had been given a resurrection when a black man was nominated for President and elected (Palin and the Tea Party, anyone?) and then given an adrenaline shot when said black man was reelected. How dare America drag them into the 21st century?


Trump might prove to be the best thing to ever happen to the Republican party. Maybe his self-destructive fire will burn away the abortion, minority on welfare, immigrant, Muslim, gay delusion and xenophobia deadweight that is most of his base, deadweight that keeps a ball and chain around the rest of American society and the Democratic experiment, deadweight that prevents the rational elements of existing government from addressing the actual problems with government establishment. Goodbye and good riddance. George Will describes his candidacy as chemotherapy for the GOP. I hope he's right. I hope the GOP base burns down to the ashes and the party can rebuild with viable, intellectual ideas that are driven less by religious paranoia and white-ness and more by love of country/countrymen and a desire to move society forward.


Fingers crossed.


  

3 comments:

  1. Well, as usual Lewis, you hit the nail on the head. I agree with (and have been saying myself) everything you said above. The Republican party has become so alt-right, so full of hate, fear and paranoia that it needs to burn to the ground, and maybe Trump will be the catalyst. My entire family -- parents, both brothers, cousins -- is voting for Trump and thinks Clinton is the devil.

    I feel in this election that I'm Alice in Wonderland and have gone down the rabbit hole or through a looking glass and will wake up and this crazy, stupid, unbelievable election won't be real. I just pray that there are enough intelligent, thinking, rational Americans left to keep this lunatic from becoming President and quite possibly hurtling America and the entire world toward the precipice.

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  2. Too true. Hey can you change your font colour? Blue over Palin (like how it's appearing on my Google phone) is kinda difficult to read!

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    1. I'll tinker with the color a little bit later and see what I can do. Thanks for letting me know about it.

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