Been a lot of grief these last couple weeks – so, my thread title should fix that right up. Right?
Oh, well – as least I tried.
Anyways…
Yet more on the Hillary scandal(s) – as I said, she won’t get indicted. Obama just won’t allow that…but the more of this that comes out, the more likely Hillary won’t get elected…and may not even get the nomination. If you think a GOP brokered convention would be a clusterfark, you ain’t seen nothing…if the Dems have one, it will be downright insane. Just imagine all the varied and conflicting Dem interest groups demanding a seat at the table…
Allahpundit does a bit more Romney ’16 trolling – in a confused and broken world, it’s good to have some things we can rely on.
Jeb is going to lose very badly in South Carolina tomorrow – and his donors are getting ready to bail out. Over to Rubio? Time will tell…
Liberals coming up with more excuses to dump Hillary.
Foreign policy: it’s bad. It needs to be fixed. Unless we get a 9/11 style attack on the USA between now and November, I don’t think it’ll play a role in the election.
College – a place where you rack up 30k in debt and come out knowing less than a 12 year old did 40 years ago.
Remember when America had talent?
Blogs For Victory 
Maybe I just have a short memory, but it seems to me that this has been one of the nastiest early GOP campaigns in recent memory. I just hope the constant “liar, lair, pants on fire” rhetoric and the vicious personal character attacks don’t do irreparable harm to the eventual nominee. And the Dems have a problem that almost no one is talking about. The person who wins the most delegates may very well end up with fewer delegates — a LOT fewer. So far Hillary has had a tie and a huge loss, and yet has NINE TIMES MORE DELEGATES than poor Bernie. I would think that would at least have the potential to completely turn off the young people who were so instrumental in electing Obama.
” I would think that would at least have the potential to completely turn off the young people who were so instrumental in electing Obama.”
It might, too, if they have the slightest idea of what is going on. There morons don’t have any idea of the elective process. They don’t know what delegates are or how they are chosen or what they do or why or how they do it. They skim along the most superficial layer of superficial, listening to some group-hug TV ads touting Bernie as a father and grandfather whose parents were immigrants and one every now and then when he offers (complete with cartoon graphics, showing a cynical awareness of the intellect of his target demographic) his plan to break up the “big banks” so somehow that will result in lots and lots of dollars to pay for health care and “free” college. He doesn’t explain this plan, mind you, or bother with any annoying details such as where does the president get the authority to do this kind of thing. He just shows big blocks broken up into little blocks and says this will magically result in more free stuff for everyone.
And that is about as deep as the analysis,or awareness, of the average Bernie supporter goes. Delegates? Huh?
I have actually wondered what it would be like to have a big ol’ free for all election—Bernie and Cruz as nominees, Trump and Hillary as 3rd (4th?) party candidates, maybe someone else jumping in just for grins.
The Green Party is having fits. Partly because they are called the Green Party thanks to the Conventional Wisdom that using the word “socialist” would be lethal, only to find that the only person in the United States who has openly run as a socialist is now a front-runner for the Dem nomination. But he is not running AS a Socialist, just as a lower-case socialist flying the Dem flag. Not only that, he is likely to pull votes away from the Greens, now so awkwardly named, meaning they won’t get a large enough percentage of the national vote to qualify for government cheese in the next election. True ideologues would be thrilled to have socialism become the Democrat Party, or vice versa, however that would go, as long as socialism is the prevailing government model and in the White House, but THEY want to be the Socialist Party, not let the Dems take over.
The Conservative Movement is having fits. Some cuckoo egg deposited in our nest has hatched, and is big and loud and obnoxious and his incessant squawking has lured away a lot of people who like to call themselves Conservatives but who really think it is OK to have a Constitution-stomping president as long as his agenda matches theirs. So now there is a fake Conservative out there, hijacking Conservative ideas so he can get elected and pulling votes away from Conservatives who actually ARE Conservatives. The movement that has had a certain guilty pleasure in thinking of itself as the smartest movement, the one with the most class, is now being taken over by a wrestling promoter who is treating the election like a cage match. Yet he has won over millions, who are thrilled at the idea of sitting ringside while he throws chairs over the ropes and trash-talks his opponents.
I sat put ’em all on the ticket—Bernie, Hillary, Ted, Donnie, whoever is running for the Greens, the Libertarians who have more in common with Cruz than with anyone but who like having their own clubhouse.
BTW, thanks for the Jonathan Winters clip. I doubt that many these days realize that he went out on stage with no script, and just winged it. (Good for comedians—for presidents, not so much.) That is why Dean Martin was having such a hard time holding it together—he had no idea what was going to come next. Knowing that is what makes it so funny. A scripted exchange where Martin asks Winters why he is talking so loud with the response that Winters had been in a cannon company in the army wouldn’t be very funny, but as an effort by Martin to throw Winters off by hitting him with that question and Winters’ instantaneous reply makes it not only truly funny but explains why Martin was cracking up.
One year I asked my husband what he wanted for Christmas and he said “Oh, just get me a Jonathan Winters album”. It took me a while, but I tracked down every recording Winters had made, and we spent a lot of hours that winter laughing till we cried. He (Winters, not my husband) was the hero of Robin Williams, who had a similar talent, and Winters and Tim Conway had to be the best at ad libbing and cracking up whoever was working with them.
Now “comedy” is F-bombs and graphic sexual references complete with explicit terminology.
Amazona
I have to disagree with you. Comedy – and entertainment as a whole – is timeless. There are huge talents today, though their form is different.
For example, youtube a recent clip of Stephen Colbert (improv genius) interviewing Will Farrell (improv genius) where Farrell wants to be the Jack Hanna of Colbert’s show.
It isn’t as good as the Winters/Martin clip but it is totally in the same vein and is very funny.
same with music. I consider most of today’s music simplistic crap but I admire Taylor Swift’s ability to write dozens of unique and catchy songs and I understand from EVERYONE the loudmouth jackass Kanye West is a lyrical genius. I don’t listen to him but everyone seems to agree he is megatalented.
I did a quick search and found some lyrics from “megatalented” Kanye West. I was going to copy some here but blog rules wouldn’t let me.
You might want to get back to EVERYONE and find out what the hell they are talking about and how they define “lyrical genius”. I sure don’t get it.
http://www.azlyrics.com/w/west.html
Highly recommend “Niggas in Paris” and “Monster” just to get a taste (eeuwwww, bad choice of words given his lyrics) of the lyrical genius of this guy.
I do think it’s funny that he evidently bamboozled enough people into this “lyrical genius” crap to get himself 53 million dollars in debt.
Amazona
All due respect but I think your age is showing. Sure, his lyrics are shocking to you and me, but not to his audience. I recall a fella in the 50s whose hip gyrations were scandalous.
To some extent, shock goes hand in hand with art, eg, Manet’s Olympia.
Bob, I am not easily shocked, so that is not a factor. I don’t think I am showing my age as much as my taste. I know plenty of young people who also find Kanye West offensive on pretty much every level, as well as being a talentless hack whose primary appeal is to people who think it darling to be offensive. I merely find West’s much-vaunted “genius” to be tacky, and substituting shock value for quality. He, like Trump, knows his audience, and his audience likes filthy lyrics. While he may be reflective of his class, I don’t think that means talent. It just means that he knows how to appeal to low class people.
And PUH-LEEEZE do not try to compare the “shock value” of Elvis Presley’s gyrations with constant repetition of f**l and motherf****r and coarse references to female anatomy and various acts involving same, or referring to women as “hos” and “bitches”. That is like saying that finding wedding dresses that expose the breasts to be the ultimate in low class sleaze reminds you of the shock value of seeing a female ankle in 1890.
I may have some guilty pleasures, such as Trailer Park Boys, but I don’t try to elevate it to “genius” status to make myself look more erudite or discerning. It is coarse and crude and I find it really funny. All West fans have to do is admit that he writes absolutely disgusting crap with no musical value, which offends as many people as possible, but they don’t care because they like it, and I am fine. It is this claim of “lyrical genius” that is so goofy. Popular does not automatically equate with quality, or are you going to argue that the WWE is “artistic genius”? Or Honey Boo Boo or Real Housewives of ___?
“To some extent, shock goes hand in hand with art, eg, Manet’s Olympia”
Seriously? “Olympia” was shocking not because of its nudity—-nudes in similar postures were a common feature of classical paintings. Try visiting places like Blenheim and you will see them on ceilings, in sculpture, etc. People were not “shocked” by the nudity, nor by the presence of the black servant. The only “shock value” came from the implication that the woman was a prostitute, and that was subtly implied. The fact that this even HAD any “shock value” shows that in that time and place, there were standards.
However, your comment touches on something I have noticed, which is that very often some people choose “art” that is as ugly and grotesque as possible, which I think is their way of trying to show that they just KNOW more about ART and are above the petit bourgeoisie. It is a version of swooning over the emperor’s new clothes. It is particularly common in works purchased by cities, which are increasingly cluttered with absolute crap. The Demon Horse at Denver International Airport is an example. It is appallingly ugly, and the people hate it. The city paid millions of dollars for it, and those in charge seem to find every criticism a validation of their vastly superior sense of artistic quality. The more it is hated, the more smug they become, and the more they seek out other vastly overprice pieces of crap to throw our money at.
Then we have the Madonna smeared with elephant poo, an example of “artistic genius”, and of course the crucifix in a beaker of urine, a true masterpiece. The argument for this kind of dreck is pretty much what you said: “To some extent, shock goes hand in hand with art…” And I not only do not agree, I think it is this kind of avoidance of judgment where judgment is called for that enables the untalented to foist merde onto the public, claiming that the very fact it is called ugly and offensive is all it takes to qualify it as “art”.
NIGGAS IN PARIS
So I ball so hard muhf**kas wanna fine me
first niggas gotta find me
What’s 50 grand to a muhf**ka like me
Can you please remind me?
Ball so hard, this shit crazy
Y’all don’t know that don’t shit phase me
The Nets could go 0-82 and I look at you like this shit gravy
Ball so hard, this shit weird
We ain’t even supposed to be here,
Ball so hard, since we here
It’s only right that we be fair
Psycho, I’m liable to go Michael
Take your pick, Jackson, Tyson, Jordan, Game 6
Ball so hard, got a broke clock, Rolleys that don’t tick tock
Audemars that’s losing time, hidden behind all these big rocks
Ball so hard, I’m shocked too,
I’m supposed to be locked up too
you escaped what I’ve escaped
You’d be in Paris getting f**ked up too
Ball so hard, let’s get faded, Le Meurice for like 6 days
Gold bottles, scold models, spillin’ Ace on my sick J’s
So ball so hard, bitch behave, just might let you meet Ye,
Chi towns D. Rose, I’m movin’ the Nets to BK
[Hook]
[2x]
Ball so hard muhf**kas wanna fine me
That shit cray [3x]
Yeah, the only reason I think this is crap is because of my age. That has to be the only reason I can’t see the lyrical genius………….
Amazona
I did not say Kanye is a genius, I don’t listen to him. But he is critically hailed everywhere.
I do believe the use of words like nigga and ho directly parallel Elvis’ hips, Sinatra callng women “chicks” and Johnny Rotten saying Queen Elizabeth isn’t a human being. It is all the same stuff.
Lastly, Olympia was not shocking due to nudity. As you point out, the world has seen nudity in art, likely since caveman days. What was shocking was that the nude was not an historical or allegorical figure but a common woman – thought incorrectly to be a prostitute – looking straight into the viewer’s gaze.
In the late 1800s, that was considered porn. Today, that is considered a cosmetics commercial.
What about La Maja Desnuda? Painted between 1797 and 1800? Just a nude – and very pretty – woman?
There is nothing wrong with the naked human form – what is wrong is how you use it. If it is designed to evoke base passions, then it is pornography…even if the figures are in some way clothed. If it isn’t, then even if stark naked, it is art. Also take a look at Venus Victrix, which is actually Napoleon’s sister, Pauline…displayed by the Pope’s in Rome…
I don’t agree that the profanity and coarseness of rap is in any way analogous to overall cultural use of a word like “chick” to denote a young woman. There is a huge difference between calling a woman a whore or a bitch and using a word like “chick”, which was never considered vulgar.
And “Olympia” was considered art in spite of having a slightly shocking tone, not BECAUSE it was shocking. Its artistic merits were quite clear, and recognized. The only shocking things about it were the direction in which the woman was looking and some of the items in the picture which some considered to be indicative of possessions of a woman of pleasure. These days all it takes to be beloved by the arteratti is to be ugly, with bonus points for being offensive.
And I stick with my comment that too often these days people slap the word “genius” on pretty much anything. I do think it is an effort to elevate one’s personal preference to a higher level of intellect, instead of just saying “Hey, I like me a little smut and violence every now and then and when I do Kanye’s my man”.
The fact is, he represents a demographic which is quite politically correct right now, and he’s their darling. If you point out that this particular emperor not only has no clothes but is a crude and vulgar jerk with no redeeming qualities, you are a racist or a snob. It is fashionable to admire his body of work, so it is admired. The fact that some profess admiration for it does not mean it is good. I offer most of “reality TV” as evidence that popular is not the same as good. Jerry Springer, will you please step forward? And where is that winsome Kim Kardashian?
I’m siding with P.T. Barnum on this one.
And no, Kanye West is most emphatically NOT “…critically hailed everywhere.” I am sure some people do love him because he reflects their culture and their values and their rage and their paranoia and their victimhood. I am equally sure that some people pretend to love him to establish their cred as being cool or sick or whatever the current term is.
But “everywhere” and “everyone” simply do not apply. The word you want is either “some” or “everyone in a certain demographic”. I suggest that the number of people who think he is a no-talent vulgar thug is probably at least as large as those who swoon over his “lyrical genius”.
I can’t believe I’m this deep into defending an artist I do not like, but I do see a pattern emerging where you would consign the term “artistic genius” to nobody.
For Kanye, when I say he is artistically hailed I mean that a survey of music critics of Rolling Stone, the Source and, literally, hundreds of others cultural touchstones says he’s amazing. I do not know if he is a genius but I know he is considered one. Same way I do not know Einstein was right – it is all over my head – but everyone in the know says so, so I sez so.
In our earlier discussion of David Bowie it was the same thing, except I actually like and respect Bowie firsthand. Bowie is considered by almost all music critics to be a vanguard genius. I agree. You said “well, I guess you like Rolling Stone” as if that was the only source of Bowie adulation.
OK, so I ask you, who is an artistic genius for you?
I am not going to argue your reply, though I ask you to name someone credibly of the genius level. I refer to your prior statement about Reba, who is a fantastic artist but, c’mon, even Reba’s mother would not put her in the Beethoven category.
”… even Reba’s mother would not put her in the Beethoven category.“
So our range is between Reba McIntyre and Beethoven? Gee, I ‘m not sure if I can work within such tight parameters.
First of all, I have a problem with the word “genius”. I think it is tossed around way too casually in our rah-rah pop culture, where “awesome” is used to describe crispy French fries. And it is way too subjective to be much of a description. For example, I think Garrison Keillor’s “Songs of the Cat” is pure genius. There is simply no other word to describe the creativity of redoing three Johnny Cash songs to have cat lyrics. And the reframing of the Marine Corps Hymn to say “From the halls of Catalina, To the shores of Katmandu, You know everywhere you travel, Cats are watching you” has basically elevated cat music to heretofore unrealized heights. It’s a standard that no one, in my opinion, has met.
There are songwriters I think are absolutely brilliant, but I don’t know if I would call them “geniuses”. Perhaps my bar is set too high. I love the lyrics of Gordon Lightfoot, Kris Kristofferson, and Paul Simon. Ian Tyson has captured much of the experience of traveling to a horse show or riding the wild range, and when I had a 4000 acre Wyoming ranch his music really spoke to me. I was once hauling 8 horses from Edmonton to Colorado, driving a deuce-and-a-half with an extended cab that included an 8′ camper (translation: Big Truck and Trailer) and still took the time to go through Calgary so I could buy a copy of Canadian Railroad Trilogy to listen to pretty much nonstop the rest of the way through Canada, because it captured the majesty of Alberta and the history of Canada. I would say that shows a pretty strong appreciation for Lightfoot and the power of his music. Genius? Probably not to a Kanye West fanboy.
Pushed to name a “genius” I would say early Dylan. Even he has said that he has no idea where all that early poetry came from. Later Dylan is gobbledygook—even when I read the lyrics to his Academy Award winning song it was gibberish—but the early stuff was amazing poetry and imagery and it had a major effect on the culture of the era. (Even I admit that “Johnny Don’t Take Your Cats To Town” has not.)
I am captivated by traditional jazz—not the discordant jumble most people think of as “jazz” but the art form which follows the basic structure of classical music—the presentation of a theme, extrapolation of the theme with various instruments, and the recapitulation of the theme at the end. My husband and I used to go to two big four day jazz parties, where the best true jazz musicians came to play for free, just for expenses, because no one could afford to have them play together and it was a chance for them to experience music at an amazing level, playing with their peers. People would pay four or five hundred dollars a ticket for the four day event, and the proceeds covered the travel and lodging for 20 to 30 of the finest jazz musicians ever born. There were moments of sheer genius at every one of those parties, times when the unrehearsed spontaneous magic was stunning. These were people whose souls were poured out in their music, and it was a glorious experience to share it.
I don’t care much about popular music, and I am not impressed with pop culture. I am impressed by talent, and I can agree that David Bowie was talented. I never dreamed that I was not just stepping on toes but evidently stomping them into bloody pulp when I said I was just never all that impressed with him or his work. I liked some of it, I thought some of it was gimmicky or cute, but it never stuck with me. I never cared enough to go back for more, I guess you could say. I’m sorry if that offends you, but that is just the way I see things.
As for rave reviews from sources who exist to give rave reviews, well, if you are into that sort of thing it matters to you and if you’re not it doesn’t. I am not, so it doesn’t matter to me at all. Quite honestly, I find most pop music annoying. Owning a ranch, I always had young people working for me, and I was always being told I should listen to So-and-So, because he/she was AWESOME, and I just didn’t get it. For twenty years or so I listened to CDs, I went to clubs, I really did try to open my mind to pop music, and I just found it—-annoying.
Oddly, though, I did find that satellite radio broadened my horizons a little. Not a lot, but a little, My second cousin works for me, and he is a professional musician, with a broad range of musical interest, so I actually spend a lot of time talking about music when we are on a road trip or just shooting the breeze on a snowy day. I find that I usually turn off most music from the 80s and 90s because I find it either boring or annoying. I did find that without the visual distraction of having to actually SEE him, Billy Idol had a pretty solid band and vocals. I find myself critiquing a lot of the Elvis stuff because the band drowns out the vocals and I just don’t like some of his arrangements. I’ve decided that Dean Martin was a better vocalist than Frank Sinatra, though I do have a cat named Francis Albert Sinatracat because when I got him his name was Frank and a friend said I should name him something Italian because his nose is quite broad and she used to date an Italian boy whose nose was broad.
See, I just don’t take it as seriously as you do. It pretty much comes down to I Don’t Really Care.
Good answer. You like a lot of what I like.
Honestly, the reason this conversation (going back to Bowie) happened wasn’t that I’m obsessed with music or the arts. I was offended that it appeared you wrote off Bowie’s accomplishments because of moral impropriety in his life. I tried (and failed, I guess) to make the point that if artists are to be discounted for their moral failings we would have no great art.
I do agree the word genius is over/mis-used, along with the word awesome, but that’s how language goes. Words change use and meaning and right now “genius” means “someone for whom I have the utmost respect.” Pretty awesome, huh?
“…it appeared you wrote off Bowie’s accomplishments because of moral impropriety in his life…” yet what I said was that I thought there should be some balance between the reality and the adulation. Praise him for the good stuff but acknowledge that there was a time in his life when he was a pig. It’s all part and parcel of the same guy. And yes, you can be a pig and make good music. Or paint good pictures. Or write good books. Or be a good actor.
Or, indeed, become an un-pig…he did seem to clean up later in life. But there is no mistaking it – he lived an exceptionally immoral life for quite a long time, and one does have to wonder how many people followed him down that path but lacking wealth and position, never got out of it?
I can’t believe I’m this deep into defending an artist I do not like
I think it’s probably a problem that can be remedied with medication, Bob.
Back to the original topic, the SC (and other) primaries…
WTF, SC?
All hail President Trump, I guess.
Do you remember the polls which asked people not just for their first choice but also for their second? Trump had about the same percentage of first-choice votes as he did in S.C. but he had next to no second choice votes. Cruz and Rubio had very high second-choice tallies as well as those for first choice. It seems that those who love Trump just flat-out love him, no matter what, in an eerie Hillary/Obama kind of fevered loyalty, but those who did not put him first on their lists for darned sure didn’t put him as second. With Trump it seems to be all or nothing—you love him or you can’t stand him.
So what do you think is going to happen to Trump’s lead when the 22.7 percent who voted for Bush, Kasich or Carson have to find someone else to support? Do you really think Trump has done anything to win these people over, so they will shift their support to him?
No, I think Trump is so polarizing that few if any who lose their number 1 choices will turn to him. Cruz will pick up some of them, and Rubio will get the rest. Or vice versa.
Almost 70% of S.C. Republican voters did not vote for Trump. The only reason he won was because that 68% or so was divided among five other people. At some point either Cruz or Rubio will back off, and once it is a two-man race I think Trump will be in the dust. My only concern is timing. Both Cruz and Rubio are too close to quit, and I am just afraid they will both hang on so long that Trump has built up too big a lead in delegates.
But what I got from the results in S,.C. was that in a two man race it would have been Trump at about 35% and the other guy with the rest.
That is my fear – that by the time it becomes a two man race, Trump will have rolled up so many wins that he’s unstoppable. My preference, right now, is that Cruz bows out..but he’s got far more money in hand than Rubio and he’s built up a ground game for Super Tuesday second to none, so he won’t bow out…meanwhile, Rubio is about to get a raft of endorsements (NV Senator Heller endorsed him the other day, NV governor Sandoval will probably endorse him tomorrow, and on it goes) and the Bush money machine will at least partially go to Rubio, so he’s got no reason to quit…
Trump quote:
“There’s nothing easy about running for president, I can tell you. It’s tough, it’s nasty, it’s mean, it’s vicious, it’s beautiful.”
So cool to think of a president who associates “tough, nasty, mean and vicious” with “beautiful”.
I found an intriguing, if somewhat incoherent, piece that I thought was going to be a defense of Donald Trump. It started with bleating about how unfair it is to see Trump supporters as low class, it wandered over into an offhand gay insult about a male writer getting up on the wrong side of his canopy bed (which actually did a lot to confirm the perception that Trump supporters are low class) and then lost its way.
“”Let’s assume, for fun, that Donald Trump’s supporters are thinking with their brains, not their viscera,” muses Mona Charen.
Trump is certainly fair game. He has a lot to say, but beyond immigration, precious little of it amounts to a coherent conservative platform.
But the people who support Trump are not idiots, do not deserve belittling, and while they may be emotional, they have not taken leave of their senses.
They have deduced, not unreasonably, that even though they don’t know exactly what Trump will do, he will definitely do it. And that can’t be worse than those who profess what they will do, but won’t actually do much of anything. Those people will go to Washington and be co-opted, as so many fake firebrands inevitably are, by Washington’s go-along get-along consensus of big spenders and status-quo protectors.
The America that Trump backers love is being stolen out from under them.
The America that Trump backers love is being stolen out from under them as government grows inexorably, the culture deteriorates irretrievably, religious freedoms are denied, their health care decisions are annexed by bureaucrats, and America becomes subsumed within a new world order governed by values they don’t share.”
A couple of things stand out. For example, it appears that the strongest argument in favor of Trump supporters that this author can come up with is that “..even though they don’t know exactly what Trump will do, he will definitely do it.” Yes, this is supposed to put Trump supporters in a better light, as the author explains that this is not unreasonable. The thing is, I think the author is completely right on this. I think this is a very accurate representation of what Trump supporters think of him. What else CAN you think of him, as this is pretty much what he promises? He can’t tell you exactly what he is going to do, or how he is going to do it, but he will guar-un-TEE that he WILL do it. And it will be beautiful. And we will be so happy.
Then the author starts in on a litany of the things that Trump supporters believe they have lost, presumably to illustrate what they think he might restore. “Government growing inexorably” bothers these people, yet Trump is for single payer health care and loves using the power of the government to confiscate private property to make it available to others who might make more money on it. Those both sound like inexorable growths of government, and happen to be Trump agendas. His supporters allegedly turn to him because they are not happy that “,, their health care decisions are annexed by bureaucrats,,,” yet they want to elect a man whose goal is having the government completely take over health care, getting private insurance companies out of the picture. These people are upset that “…religious freedoms are being denied..” yet they are in love with a guy who wants to put an ardent abortion supporter, his sister, on the Supreme Court. Trump supporters supposedly love him because they are upset that “..the culture deteriorates irretrievably..” yet if Liberace were still alive he might run second to Trump in garish bad taste. From beauty pageants to cheesy casinos to being a serial adulterer and bragging about all the women he has bedded to having a wife who posed nude to bragging that he has long beautiful fingers and also other body parts to basically being the poster boy for bad taste, crudity, vulgarity and coarseness, Trump represents the deterioration of our culture.
I just found it funny that there seems to be no way to really defend the guy. The author kind of lost his way, starting with an effort to defend Trump supporters and being indignant that they don’t get much respect, and then pointed out why anyone who supports Trump, at least based on the reasons this guy laid out, really DON’T deserve much respect.
But there I was today, talking to yet another person who is “thinking I’ll vote for Trump…or maybe for Bernie”.
I’m getting the distinct impression that people just want to overturn the apple cart and the don’t care much what happens afterwards. If we GOPers can’t stop him in the primaries, I think he’ll squash Hillary like a bug in November…and then we’ll have Trump, making a hash out of everything and the Republican Party and Conservatism will get all the blame…
Maybe it’s time to start drinking heavily?
I’ll drink to that!
It seems that what is selling this year is authenticity. Love Trump or hate him, people believe he means what he says. Same thing with Sanders.
Everyone else is a politician but those two seem authentic. That’s why someone can say, “Maybe Trump, if not him Bernie.”
Policy is of no importance. Authenticity is all that matters to these voters.
You are right—both are selling authenticity. Of course, Bernie’s authenticity is only as deep as his TV ads. Yes, he IS angry, and yes, he DOES admit to being a socialist, but that is as far as his authenticity goes. He has created an illusion that is very shallow.
As for Trump, for Trump to sell authenticity is ironic beyond description. Trump is the Velveeta of the political world—–imitation processed cheese food, not real cheese. And the color. Trump is “authentic” for brief moments at a time, till he has to change his position to be authentic about something else.
He is “authentically” pro-life, though until he decided to be an “authentic” conservative he was adamantly pro-abortion, and even now can’t stop defending Planned Parenthood.
He is “authentically” a supporter of the 2nd Amendment, or should I say “two amendment” now that conservative cred relies on just ignoring his prior position on banning “assault rifles”.
He is “authentically” a Christian though his position does not involve ever asking for forgiveness for any of his oh-so-many sins, and his efforts to bolster this impression are laughable as he didn’t even rehearse the right terminology to use when referencing his authentically favorite passages from the Bible.
And so on… I simply believe that the only way to consider Donald Trump “authentic” is to very determinedly ignore or deny the vast body of evidence that the man is a complete fraud.
But you are right—-Trump IS selling himself as “authentic”. Of course he sold memberships in Trump University, which was not an authentic university at all and finally had to stop using the word, with the promise that he would be the teacher of how to make vast amounts of money. The
studentssuckers never saw him, and those who went to an event to have their photos taken with Trump got to pose with a cardboard cutout of Trump instead.THAT is the image we need to keep in our minds when we start to get sucked into the fantasy that Trump is “authentic”. The Trump gold standard is imitation gold plated over tin, and what his
supporterssuckers will get when then fall for this latest sales pitch is the equivalent of a cardboard cutout.“..Love Trump or hate him, people believe he means what he says…”
No, they don’t. Well, some do. But most do not believe a word he says. Nearly 70% of primary voters in South Carolina did not think he means what he says. Yes, he is leading a pack of six, but with figures well under 50%—that does not translate into people believing he means what he says. Most people don’t believe a word that he says. Some are willing to say he might believe what he says at the moment he says it, but most people think he is a lying, blustering bag of wind who can’t be trusted.
From a recent article:
“Trump’s sales tactics can be analyzed psychologically. Some have said he gives voice to America’s id, that he is just saying what we are all thinking. I prefer psychoanalytical pioneer Carl Jung’s description of the shadow, rather than Freud’s id – the unacceptable thoughts and feelings we bury in our unconscious and are denied expression. By giving voice to our collective shadow, our unconscious says to us, “Thank God he said that. Now I’m not a bad person.” Now, we suddenly identify with Trump. He’s brought us to his side because he can say what we cannot.
The best salesmen appeal to your shadow. They seduce you by appealing, not to your higher thinking and developed functions, but to your shadow. They whisper, “You deserve that new car. You are unappreciated at work. Show them you have value. Show them you’re better than they are.”
Voters who think they can figure out what he stands for are in for a surprise. Trump doesn’t even know what he stands for, so voters don’t stand a chance of figuring him out. Trump stands for whatever garners him publicity, doesn’t waste his time, and is beneficial to his economic empire.”
“Policy is of no importance. Authenticity is all that matters to these voters.”
I agree that policy is of no importance to supporters of Bernie/Trump. I don’t agree, however, that “authenticity” is all that does matter. I think Bernie’s main appeal to his young supporters is to fear— fear of the world of grownups, where they would have to earn what they get, where what they get is based on how good they are at something and how hard they work. What Bernie represents to them is not “cradle to grave” because that phrase implies that there is something between the cradle and the grave, while Bernie tells them they can have a cradle they never have to leave, that will wrap them up in warm fuzzy security and let them do whatever they want to do and get whatever they want to get for the rest of their lives without ever having to accomplish anything, be judged on how good they are at anything (which is reflected, out there in Scaryland, in making more money and being able to provide those things for yourself). He promises them the things people used to have to work for, simply by being there. Bernie is the Participation Trophy candidate.
Even the anger Bernie works so hard to stir up is vague and unfocused, just something to shore up their support, so they can pretend they are really righteous fighters for WHAT IS FAIR. There is an element in it of getting even with the mythical but ever-so-attractive bogeyman of Big Business, a less violent form of looting the TV store, but mostly the anger is a shallow veneer over the real attraction, which is never having to grow up.
Trump and Trumpets are more complicated. Trump is also tapping into that “Let’s Get The Bastards” mentality, but his appeal is more visceral. Somehow Trump has managed to pull a Hillary on a lot of conservatives.
Don’t believe me? Go read Morgan Freeman’s rant on how Hillary has never done anything wrong and every single thing that is being said about her is a lie spread by people who hate her.
Then read the excuses people give for supporting Trump. There are actually people who support Trump because they are won over by his HONESTY!
It is all the same thing. It is all determined denial of what is so blatantly obvious and true, because once that emotional connection has been made no justification for it is too wild, too unbelievable, too bizarre.
Here is an example of manly man Donald, regarding his attack on Rubio’s qualification to be president.
“I’m not sure. Let people make their own determination,” he said.
“Somebody said he’s not and I retweeted it.””
What a guy!
Now, to be honest, I have been saying this about Rubio for years. I also had concerns about Cruz, till I learned that at some time Congress had, in a completely unrelated circumstance many years ago, decided that not only the citizenship of the father could be considered, but also that of the mother. Based on that, I decided that in my opinion Cruz IS a natural born citizen, because he meets the two criteria of being born to a citizen, and that the parent spent the necessary time as a resident of the United States.
I have always questioned Rubio and Jindal, as both of them were born to parents who were not citizens at the time of their births. They both qualify as NATIVE born citizens, if you accept the general wide and expansive interpretation of the 14th Amendment to include anyone born here, but not NATURAL born citizen.
For the past several years I have argued that these three men—-Cruz, Rubio and Jindal—-had a legal and moral responsibility to be proactive on this issue, and get it adjudicated and resolved long before any of them became involved in a presidential race, to avoid this very scenario. Evidently Cruz did his own legal research and analysis, and was satisfied with what he learned. It appears that Rubio and Jindal just crossed their fingers and hoped it would not come up.
I have argued that we could not posture as sincere constitutional conservatives if we don’t demand that our presidential candidates meet the constitutional requirements for the presidency. And no, love of this country, sincerity, good-heartedness, simply do not override the law of the land.
And here we are, right in the middle of the mess I have been predicting. Well, I did not predict that it would be a Republican who stirred it up, but it is here, in our laps, carefully timed to land about ten days before the 1st of March. Do not try to tell me that Trump just learned of this, and the timing is incidental. He is a Dirty Tricks anything goes unprincipled gutter fighter, and this is Classic Trump.
There is plenty of blame to go around, as I am sure that Rubio has been aware of this and just decided to take his chances and depend on a sloppy reading of the constitution and of the 14th Amendment (or, as Trump might say, Fourteen Amendment) but the sliminess of the timing, and of Trump’s coy little pursed-lips evasion of “Hey, don’t blame ME, I just got a tweet and passed it on” is shameful.
His adoring groupies, though, won’t care.
I just read a very good article in Public Discourse, a very interesting site I recently found and subscribed to. So far what I have read has been quite thoughtful.
“The question is not “Why Trump now?” but rather “Why not a Trump before now?” Perhaps some residual self-respect on the part of primary voters has driven them, up to now, to seek experience, knowledge of public policy, character, and responsibility in their candidates. The Trump phenomenon suggests that in a significant proportion of the (nominally) Republican electorate, this self-respect has decayed considerably.
A similar observation might be made about the even larger number of Bernie Sanders voters in the (nominally) Democratic electorate. But at least Sanders is a man with a track record in political life; if his prescriptions for our contemporary predicaments are risibly detached from reality, at least he has thesound of an ordinary politician about him—if an extreme one. His ideology is consistent and comprehensible, representing familiar trends in Democratic Party thinking, simply pushed beyond what many would have assumed were the natural limits of the “socialism” the party could espouse.
Trump is another phenomenon altogether. The great economist Thomas Sowell, in the now-famous National Review symposium “Against Trump,” likened him to Hitler. Ordinarily this kind of comparison is condemned as the reductio ad Hitlerum, the old joke being that the first person in a debate to invoke Hitler loses the argument. But Sowell was referring to the kind of appeal Trump seems to have for his supporters—a comparison to Mussolini, or to Juan Peron or some other lesser despot, would have sufficed as well. The thread uniting them is that they are all “strong man” demagogues, railing against largely imaginary enemies whose real-life stand-ins are by no means guilty of the crimes of which they are accused, because actually no one is guilty of them—the crimes themselves are imaginary.
But to a segment of aggrieved voters who are caught up in the gears of an economy unfriendly to their interests, and who see the luster of their country’s greatness dimming, a hoarsely shouted condemnation of the whole professional political class as losers and betrayers has struck a nerve.
For these voters, so far it has not mattered that Trump is a man of low character and a sordid history of flirting with the political class he lambastes; a man with no evident knowledge on any subject of either domestic or foreign policy, and no sign yet of any interest in learning; and a man whose expressed views, when they are intelligible at all, are a mass of self-contradictions. He fights (he says), he wins (he claims), and he will make America great again (he promises). That is all, and for some considerable number of voters, apparently that is enough.”
by Matthew J. Franck
within 2016 Election, American Founding, Politics
Feb 22, 2016 07:00 am http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/02/16498/
“Many have remarked that Barack Obama “created” or is somehow responsible for the Donald Trump phenomenon. There is something to this. Obama rose rapidly, almost too rapidly to be believed, to the presidency after an undistinguished career in the Illinois state legislature while pursuing a day job as a “community organizer” and moonlighting teaching law school. He rose on the wings of his rhetoric, a pastiche of uplift and moralizing, and he benefited, of course, from his adroit use and non-use of his race.
Obama was, in his way, the sunnier version of the ambitious demagogue whom the founders feared, and against whose election they—and Van Buren—sought to safeguard the country through complex screening and constraining mechanisms. As president, he has turned, in his frustration at the loss of his party’s control of Congress, to ambitious overreaching in his use of executive power. His argument is never that the Constitution authorizes his latest gambit (he leaves that unhappy task to his beleaguered lawyers in the courts), but that he has an electoral mandate to act that a recalcitrant Congress cannot be permitted to obstruct—sounding like a kind of Wilsonian presidential id.
With Donald Trump, however, we encounter a much darker id, somehow both anarchic and dictatorial all at once. He has no eloquence, only outbursts; no ideology, only ambition; no plans and white papers, only wild improvisations. If he is nominated, he bids fair to destroy one of our country’s two major parties. If he is elected, he will probably only destroy himself, if we are lucky.”
by Matthew J. Franck
within 2016 Election, American Founding, Politics
Feb 22, 2016 07:00 am http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/02/16498/
Proof of irrational disconnect:
“NPR notes that 31% of South Carolina voters who said “religious beliefs mattered in casting their vote” chose Trump.”
“Why not a Trump before now?”
Maybe Trump is a fake, a demagogue, a buffoon and his followers are all morons. Let me make a stab at the question ‘why not Trump before?.’
For this attempt I’ll assume working class GOP voters (and Reagan Democrats) are interested primarily in not having their standard of living undercut. I’ll also assume they are economically literate enough to understand that corporations make more money when they can pay lower wages, all other things being equal. On the other hand, I’ll assume they haven’t taken so many phony economics classes to make them retarded, e.g. believing in Ricardo’s comparative advantage bulls**t.
Heading over to the Teamster’s website we find that even the liberal working class understands that crappy trade deals like NAFTA & TPP enrich corporations at the cost of the US workers. That’s seems pretty clear, companies move to where labor is cheapest all other things being equal. Even a redneck trucker can figure that one out.
Next, common sense tells people that a massive increase in the labor supply by allowing undocumented workers in the US has undercut wages. That’s something everyone can see with their eyes every day. Data shows the middle class standard of living has been stagnant or decreased for the last 30 years, mainly due to the reserve of illegal activity. Only now that technology is on hand to replace the same people has the net influx of Mexicans ceased.
Watching any of his speeches, again not judging his soul, we find that Trump’s main selling points are 1.Better trade deals 2. Decreased immigration.
THAT makes the question ‘why not a person pushing points 1 & 2 before’. Well there were. Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan both were GOP politicians who championed better trade deals and controlled immigration. They also championed limited warmongering like Trump which is, by the way, a secondary interest of the working class.
Recall what happened to both of these politicians, right here on B4V. They were savaged brutally by the Count and others as being racists and anti-Semites. Despite having many minority and Jewish supporters Buchanan and Paul were schlonged by establishment types, including many of those here on B4V who instead push the open borders, free trade, endless war candidates.
What the working class has been told by the GOP establishment is that if you are worried about your future and that of your children you are probably either 1. racist or 2. untalented or unwilling to compete globally against billions of people to maintain a standard of living your parents and grandparents died for in wars and on picket lines.
.My agreeing with you didn’t last long.
First I will address your assertion that here on B4V both Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan were called “racists and anti-Semites”. I have been on this blog for more than ten years and I don’t remember any such accusations. I also can’t think of a single conservative poster here on B4V who has “…push(ed) the open borders, free trade, endless war candidates…” because that is just a gross oversimplification, tainted by your own personal bias, both of candidates and how they were supported here.
Yes, yes, yes, the whole economic disadvantage of having millions of cheap laborers here by allowing illegal immigration has been gone over, ad nauseum. I get it, we get it, Cruz gets it, Rubio gets it, Carson gets it, Rand Paul gets it, Fiornia gets it, Bush gets it, even Kasich gets it. So the argument that it takes a Trump to address the issue is pure bulls**t. As for “better trade deals” Donald is going for the simplistic approach, one which also had appeal during the Depression when massive tariffs were imposed because logically it seemed obvious that if we taxed the hell out of imports we would force more industry right here in the United States. It was a disaster. Sometimes, when people are preening over their grasp of what seems obvious, it is a good idea to take a look at why it hasn’t been done already. Or what happened when it WAS done. Hard on the ego, no doubt, to have to admit that you are not such a genius that it took YOU to come up with the “solution” but it is a good exercise.
“Watching any of his speeches, again not judging his soul, we find that Trump’s main selling points are 1.Better trade deals 2. Decreased immigration.”
Yet actually watching his speeches tells us that he is incoherent, that he is tossing out platitudes and generalities, and that he doesn’t have much in the way of specifics. He is playing to the crowd, throwing them whatever raw meat he thinks will get them on their feet in hysterical adoration. You also modify his message to make it sound less crazy. What gets people on their feet screaming in mob adoration is not a calm, rational, policy to decrease immigration—it is I WILL DEPORT THEM ALL.
Logic, which you invoked, would lead a reasonable person to hear this and say “How?” “Just how would that work? Will you herd millions of people onto cattle cars headed south? What about their possessions? Their assets? Will we ship their possessions for them? Will we just reimburse them for what they have to leave behind? How much would that cost? What about their children who were born here? Their pets? Where would you send them? Is just “across the border” good enough? What if they have no homes to return to? Will they need documentation to be able to go back to their native lands? What if they don’t have any documentation? What if their native countries won’t accept them? Who will do the deporting? How many people will have to be hired to do the deporting? Will they be able to use force? Will they be armed? Trained? Who will train them? How much expansion of the federal government would this require? What about illegals who are not Latino? Air fare? What would this cost?”
How many of these questions have been asked when Donald points his finger and declaims I’LL DEPORT THEM ALL !!!” I haven’t heard any, just hysterical screams of joy because Donald TELLS IT LIKE IT IS !!!!
1. “I have been on this blog for more than ten years and I don’t remember any such accusations.” -Amazona
Well you don’t have a good memory. I do.
I agree, you have an amazing memory. Much as you know things that are not true, you can remember things that never happened.
“What the working class has been told by the GOP establishment is that if you are worried about your future and that of your children you are probably either 1. racist or 2. untalented or unwilling to compete globally against billions of people to maintain a standard of living your parents and grandparents died for in wars and on picket lines.”
Absolute, unadulterated bullshit. Not even any ** to soften the language, just straight-out bullshit.
Umm, you use *** and then the word “bullshit” side by side?
Just giving you some *** here, Amazona. lol.
Yes. Good catch, there, Bob. You picked right up on that literary tactic I used to show increasing frustration, going from a moderate form of speech to one more bold.
Oh, wait a minute. Did you? Never mind.
Bardolf
I wasn’t here when “the Count,” et al were trashing Paul and Buchanan so there is only so far I can comment, but I do find it hard to believe Ron Paul was disregarded by this site. His policies – and those of his son – seem very in-line with B4V opinions.
Regarding Buchanan, he certainly has written and said some things folks might consider antisemitic/racist, but not Ron Paul.
Also, I find it hard to believe the B4V consensus was open borders, as that is the opposite of the current view, and ditto re: free trade.
Has this site done a 180 in the last year or two, or is your characterization off?
It’s not only off, it is so far off it’s delusional. dolf is a math teacher at a small New Mexico college, where he doesn’t just wander from position to position, he veers so wildly he makes Foster Brooks look stable and reliable. He’ll spout Leftist nonsense and then get all riled up if you call him a Leftist. He drops in every now and then but after he makes a point or two all bets are off and he is indulging in invented memories of things that never were.
As example of bardolf reasoning: I once used a British slang term, in the context of a post, and dolf came back haranguing me for “pretending to be British”. Moi?
Not only that, he drinks zinfandel with brie! (Oh, the horror!)
Ron Paul did have some good points – but he drifted towards anti-Semitism, as do all people who start to believe that Israel, rather than Arab/Muslim irrationality, is the problem. And I don’t think anyone here on the right has ever been open borders – I’m an amnesty shill, of course, but I also want firm border security.
Bob Eisenhower,
I’ve been coming to B4V for 12 years, so this is my 4th election. When it was BlogsforBush it was large and funny, they poked holes in Kerry’s narrative, showed pictures of him dropping footballs and his penchant for windsurfing and it was one of the first sites showing the absurdity of the fake Killian documents.
As for me, I was raised in a traditional Catholic, pro-life, anti-war, pro-family, pro-union household of blue collar workers close to the stockyards. I’m not a fan of people who think working class stiffs are easily led by fear and other brute emotions. Unlike the ‘real conservatives’ who use the constitution as their bible I’m inconsistently pragmatic. When Obama appoints the 5th liberal wizard to the supreme court and 10-30 million socialists are added to the voting rolls with amnesty, all the yearning for the glory days of the enlightened founding fathers will be for naught.
It’s true that I come here irregularly. Mostly I do so hoping that Mark will have written up his opus on mercantilism or something like that, basically an option which confronts both communism and out of control capitalism. Mark could write that book and should write that book, thus far he has mostly written 99 cent novels about corrupt liberals. As if that’s newsworthy.
Besides being a mathematician, Amazona doesn’t know much about me. I’m a resident of Italy, working as a researcher in mathematical medicine at the University of Rome, random configurations of adult stem cells. I have a PhD in stochastic processes from one of the top universities in the world and am widely travelled. I actually know the local languages where I travel. The good news from Europe is that it’s the Jubilee Year of Mercy here in Rome and Pope Francis has opened the holy doors. The bad news is Merkel and others have let in a flood of immigrants whose ideals clash with enlightenment values.
As you can imagine from the wine-cheese pairing comment it used to be common here at B4V to insult people who weren’t GOP establishment approved. Neocon, GMB and others were basically banned for being too vulgar. Blog rules about calling names like ‘dolf’ were instituted to tame the herd, but they don’t apply to everyone equally. A word of advice, you should be careful about putting info on this blog. Conservatives are used to SJW’s doxing people, but some here also enjoy their NCIS role in ‘exposing’ people with their basement keyboards. The proffering of information about where I work was intended to either to ridicule people who work at small colleges , keep people in liberal environments from contributing to conservative blogs or just as a Trump-like gratuitous insult.
Going through the archives, I’m fairly consistent. I am pro-life and see that the GOP has done nothing relevant. I’m pro-family and again see that the GOP has let everyone down. You’d be hard pressed to see what B4V conservative candidates have actually conserved besides low tax rates. Being anti-war I don’t agree with anyone here about the Iraq war. I think history will show what a disaster that was for the world and hold Bush and his sycophants responsible just like they will for Obama in Libya and Syria. I’m also not a believer in phony economic numbers as many here love. If you go through the archives you’ll see the buffoonery of people saying Obama is horrible because gas prices are high. Now that oil is so low that the North Dakota economy has collapsed, there is a silence.
Mark is the honest one here. He’ll admit the accusations of anti-semitism occurred as soon as anyone places Israel behind US interests. IMO, Trump is mostly immune from the charge because his daughter is Jewish. If she wasn’t, then Trump’s latest opinion that the US should be somewhat neutral on the Palestinian issue would have him labelled an anti-semite overnight.
My memory doesn’t have to be good to recall a Jewish convert accusing the candidate I support of anti-Semitism. As Kerrey would say, those memories are seared in my brain. I also went through the archives and found some of my posts questioning why Gingrich was being featured on the blog over Ron Paul when only Mitt and Ron had qualified in e.g. W. Virginia.
Finally, the guy who runs the blog, Mark admits he is an amnesty shill which is just another way of saying being for open borders. Some may find a big difference between open borders and amnesty, but I recall Reagan’s fiasco and it’s impact. As I said, arbitrarily letting 10-30 million Latin-Americans join the voting rolls will make US politics closer to Latin-American politics.
Well, still working on the book about the corrupt Democrat…which is getting to be a much longer process than I envisioned. But Blinded by the Lies will be done. That will answer all questions – and infuriate gigantic numbers of people. Most people have their one Precious Little Lie they believe in…I’m going after all of them.
Wow. First, good for you, dolf, getting to move to Italy. I am a little envious, as I am considering doing an immersion course in Italian, living in Italy for a month or so. I have never questioned your skills.
Your paranoia is showing, though. For example, there was, and is, a ban on name-calling, but it has never extended to friendly nicknames. You yourself referred to the Count, though that is an abbreviation of his blog name. I refer fondly to “Spook” instead of the more formal “Retired Spook”. I believe you, yourself, have called me “Ama”. “dolf” is merely a nickname for “bardolf”. I never realized you took its use as an attack or insult.
The closest I have ever come to making fun of what you do or did, or where you do or did it, was to point out that as a big fish in a very small pond you seemed to have a very elevated opinion of yourself. Your thin skin resulted in a lot of anger at being gently teased, as in the flip comment about drinking zin with brie, but let’s face it, you could sometimes be quite pompous, and pomposity does invite a little deflating.
We have often given a little background about ourselves here. During the period you mention I was quite candid about being a rancher in Wyoming, and got quite a bit of sneering flack from Libs who ridiculed me as a rube, a “farmer” (which I never took as an insult though they seemed to think it was) and there were a lot of comments about how as someone who shovels manure I was hardly qualified to comment on things above my rank. I also had bloggers, of the Liberal stripe, claiming they knew my name and address. So the whine “..The proffering of information about where I work was intended to either to ridicule people who work at small colleges …,” is just silly, and even more so is the fear that when I mentioned your background it was a sinister ploy to “… keep people in liberal environments from contributing to conservative blogs…” As for it being “..just as a Trump-like gratuitous insult…” I have to admit, it never occurred to me that being accused of being a math professor in any college would be considered a “gratuitous insult”.
Transgendered Albino Eskimo Studies, perhaps. Not math.
And I often spoke of my love for New Mexico and the time I spent living in Santa Fe. I have always been quite candid about being blue-collar, coming from a farming family, being a rancher, having jobs such as restaurant management—hardly the attitude of someone who is a snob. You made a comment about someone thinking “working class stiffs being easily led by fear and “other brute emotions”, whatever that means, yet I have always been proud of being a “working class stiff”, have prodded you on occasion for having a rather high-nosed attitude, and this blog has often defended those of us in fly-over country against the snobbery of the coastal elites.
You complain ” I also went through the archives and found some of my posts questioning why Gingrich was being featured on the blog over Ron Paul when only Mitt and Ron had qualified in e.g. W. Virginia.” Yeah, you may have. But why not? This is a place where people post their comments and opinions, and evidently more people who post here were impressed by what Gingrich had to say than Ron Paul. I still think Gingrich, for all his flaws, has had more good ideas about government than Ron Paul.
“My memory doesn’t have to be good to recall a Jewish convert accusing the candidate I support of anti-Semitism.” While this is clearly “seared” into your brain, it is a far cry from being “..savaged brutally by the Count and others as being racists and anti-Semites.”
This is what I mean, dolf, when I comment on you knowing what is not true and remembering what did not happen. I understand that you have a lot of animus toward the blog, and most if not all of its contributors, There were times you had a rough time here, but that is probably because you were often taken to task for sweeping misstatements. One person saying another is anti-Semitic, based on a specific comment, is not really the same as Paul and Buchanan being “savaged brutally” by several people, any more than using a British slang term is the same as “pretending to be British”.
Perhaps you would have more fond memories of this blog if you were a little less thin-skinned and a little less inclined to connect the dots by adding so many of your own to result in wild leaps to unsupported conclusions.
Here is a perspective of Trump supporters, one with which I happen to agree.
“This possibility (a Trump nomination) has huge ramifications within politics and America in general. It will mean one of the most painful spectacles of a presidential race in history as well as one of the most negative and divisive. But before we get there, can we stop for a second and examine what this means for the Republican Party?
Republicans Are Not Firm Believers in Principle
This is by far the biggest reveal and toughest to swallow. The Republican Party right now is not a party of principle. There’s no way you can talk about adherence to the Constitution and support Trump, especially while there are other options on the ballot. There’s really no way you can talk about adherence to any principle and support Trump, whose positions are about as firm as Kanye West’s finances.
There’s no way you can criticize President Barack Obama for being thin-skinned and support Trump. There’s no way you can rail against Obamacare and simply shrug when Trump wants to pay for people’s health care through the government. The list goes on and on and on. The biggest thing that Trump has revealed about a good portion of the Republican Party is that their principles are just as malleable and capricious as his.”
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/what-trump-reveals-about-republicans-and-why-it-means-the-left-will-eventually-win
Amazona
Perhaps Kanye is a financial genius, too. (more of that *** that I’m dishing out. I’ll stop now).
Will you?
Here is more of Matt Walsh’s letter to Trumpets:
“I couldn’t take your anger seriously even if I wanted to. After all, you say you’re angry that people are too afraid to speak their minds, but, as we’ve established, you don’t really want anyone but Donald Trump to speak his mind.
You say you’re angry about the corruption in Washington, but you support a slimy swindler and fraudster who boasts of his bribery schemes and makes no apologies for shamelessly exploiting political corruption for personal gain.
You say you’re angry about illegal immigration, but you rally around a guy who supported amnesty as recently as 2013, employed illegal immigrants, and donated millions of dollars to open borders politicians like Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Chuck Schumer, and Hillary Clinton.
You say you’re angry about the establishment, but you worship a candidate who said only a few weeks ago that “you got to be a little establishment” in order to get things done, and who admits he “was the establishment” right until he ran for president.
You say you’re angry that Republicans won’t fight, but you hail as a warrior the same guy who says he’ll happily “work with the Democrats,” which probably explains why Sen. Harry Reid praised him and Jimmy Carter called him “malleable.” It is not uncommon for me to hear from Trump fans that they’re angry at “GOPe” Republicans for “cutting deals” and “compromising” in one breath, and in the very next that they want Trump because he’s really good at cutting deals and compromising.
Right down the list, you are blithely embracing every single thing you say you’re so angry about. Trump is the very embodiment of corruption, deception, cowardice, and elitism. He is precisely the sort of man you supposedly detest. Trump is exploiting America’s frustration with men like Trump. Trump is running against Trump. You are voting for Trump because you hate Trump. You are angry at politicians because they act like Trump and make deals like Trump and go to cocktail parties with men like Trump and look down on the little guy like Trump and possess the integrity of Trump, and so you’re (sic) solution is to elect Trump. Your anger at Trump leads you to Trump. Perhaps this explains why you’re so worried about politicians who are “controlled by donors,” but you aren’t at all concerned about a politicians who is the very donor you didn’t want controlling the political process. “I’m sick of these donors influencing the government! I have an idea: let’s make one president!” “
And no, Matt Walsh and I have not compared notes, even though he is saying exactly what I have been saying.