“His supporters don’t seem to care very much about consistency from one interview or statement to the next, as long as he’s always projecting strength.”
There’s no intellectual or psychological difference between a Trump crowd and a WWE crowd. If Trump told the people at his next rally that they should take their folding chairs out onto the streets and assault every minority person they see WWE-style, you’d have Trumpettes trampling each other in their frantic eagerness to be the first to land a blow.
If he told them to break into the nearest public library and throw all the books into a pile in the street, the bonfire would be fifty feet high.
This ‘mess’ was ‘created’ bit by bit, step by step. Intention is a subject for debate. ‘It’ can be unwound and, like the financial mess, must be for classic Americanism to reemerge. A good first step would be for the press to acknowledge its cause and effect membership in the visible causality club and to end their long-standing but scoreless love affair with their own imaginings, but a serious, loving intervention has to happen first.
And yet, what part of advocating violence is still protected by the Constitution?
Trump is yelling FIRE in a crowded theater. He’s pouring gasoline on a pile of rags, paint cans, and dynamite. His followers are committing violence against minorities. When is enough enough?
I already outlined how to fix this. I did it on another thread…On the Minneapolis/BlackLivesMatter story on post #13.
I am probably “wrong” in the wonk-world, but I do know it has to be done. No democracy with as much responsibility as this one does can have 60% of its voters (especially the young) Outsource their Voting Franchise to the 40% who do take the trouble and who skew heavily to Derpishness of unimaginable proportions.
And the beautiful thing about my state of mind is that I do not give a fuck about someone saying “what you say would not work” because I know that the matter I am addressing is necessary to be done by someone.
“As the newspaper put it, ‘His right to spew nonsense is protected by the Constitution, but the public doesn’t need to swallow it’.”
Except his public will buy it all uncritically. Low information voters are high information conspiracy buffs. And media participation in conspiracy cover ups is integral to any good conspiracy especially when the “media” is the NY Times.
Oh, pardon me NYT, I wasn’t aware the “public” had any awareness of, much less choice, in the matter thanks to and by the deft circumlocutions of an equally aware, opinionated but invisible public entity once charged with their information.
That’s actually the key development in the GOP electorate this season that isn’t being discussed that much. Because its a huge shifting point going forward. People don’t make that sort of change for just one election cycle; its going to create problems for the GOP for a long time going forward.
I don’t understand this. I get part of it – it’s deliberate trolling. But I don’t get the odd capitalization. Is it supposed to more annoying, so the troll is more effective?
“The really sad thing in all of this is that there are real live Americans out there that don’t care about the truth.”
As Stephen Colbert’s character used to say “many Americans believe what sounds like the truth”. One American’s “truthiness” is another’s “factually wrongness.”
“social media—a form of communication that doesn’t require any proof, unlike an exchange with a reporter should”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
If it didn’t include “odd capitalization” it wouldn’t be our Eustace who’s been doing his special brand of trolling and amusing us since the 19th century.
"The media know how lazy and unchallenging the public is, "
The public know how lazy and unchallenging the media is,
It’s such a mess we don’t even know where to start. Fifteen or so candidates for the Republican nomination? Huh? And they’re all demanding equal time? And the media says yes we can make it happen? You can we ask? “Absolutely” they all say with confidence and a nod.
Add into the mix the bodacious front-running Mr. Trump who’s “factually inaccurate” almost all the time followed by brain surgeon Crazy Ben Carson reminiscing of his childhood days chasing mom around the kitchen with a hammer, all for the prize of most votes in a state that has as many cows as voters.
Not fixable. It’s like trying to cancel the Super Bowl. Too much $$$$ to be made.
If you notice, the capitalization (usually) starts and stops when a key near the Caps Lock key is typed, approximating the typing style of a frothing-at-the-mouth key-pounding madman. A nice touch, actually. And I especially like the “one” stuck in the middle of the “caps-lock flipping” explanation points at the end. Comedy gold.
Lately, pundits and punters seem bullish on Donald Trump, whose chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination recently inched above 20 percent for the first time at the betting market Betfair. Perhaps the conventional wisdom assumes that the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris will play into Trump’s hands, or that Republicans really might be in disarray. If so, I can see where the case for Trump is coming from, although I’d still say a 20 percent chance is substantially too high.
Quite often, however, the Trump’s-really-got-a-chance! case is rooted almost entirely in polls. If nothing Trump has said so far has harmed his standing with Republicans, the argument goes, why should we expect him to fade later on? One problem with this is that it’s not enough for Trump to merely avoid fading. Right now, he has 25 to 30 percent of the vote in polls among the roughly 25 percent of Americans who identify as Republican. (That’s something like 6 to 8 percent of the electorate overall, or about the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked.) As the rest of the field consolidates around him, Trump will need to gain additional support to win the nomination. That might not be easy, since some Trump actions that appeal to a faction of the Republican electorate may alienate the rest of it. Trump’s favorability ratings are middling among Republicans (and awful among the broader electorate).
