Trump is a buffoon, and always has been. He's played fast and loose with the truth* to his own advantage in business and celebrity, since we've known who he was. He has roughly a third-grader's vocabulary and oratory style. And a third-grade bully's at that. His vocabulary is so stunted, that even after one of his huge applause lines, rather than expounding on what he's said, he just repeats the same words again and again, with his limited set of bombastic adjectives. But worse than his relentlessly negative and abrasive style, is his tenuous grasp of basic facts.
In just the last couple of days, Trump has unleashed a stream of easily disproven statements. Sometimes badly conflated and distorted memories, sometimes wildly exaggerated claims, sometimes just stream-of-consciousness lies. And none of it matters. None of it shakes off his true believers. Not the open racism, not the untruth of his claims, not the vagueness of his promises, not the true horror of having this reactionary, thin-skinned bully in control of the nuclear football. The same people who decried President Obama's "lack of experience" and "celebrity," are eating up every horrifying utterance of this braying egotist.
Even Ben Carson--once thought to be supplanting Trump as front-runner (a horror in itself)--briefly jumped aboard Trump's recent big lie about Muslims celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey, as the buildings fell. He quickly had to issue a "my bad!" retraction, which I suppose should be heartening. After all, Carson has had his own string of easily disproven statements recently. And they initially didn't seem to matter to his own base. But Carson has been slipping since then. Maybe that should cheer me up?
But I come back around to distress. How can such a large group of Americans be so vaguely pissed off, so ready to win, that they'll gladly make this cult-of-personality, reality TV star made of pure id the most powerful man in the world? Can the GOP really let this happen?
*Perhaps the most baffling claim in all of this, is the Trump supporters' claim that "Trump speaks the truth." He doesn't. He speaks what ever crosses his mind, often changing direction mid-sentence, often several times. He speaks in parentheticals--sometimes within parentheticals--wherein he more than occasionally contradicts the point he started out making. He is the embodiment of "truthiness," Stephen Colbert's "gut feel" explanation for believing something that feels right, even if the details are all wrong. And his supporters--who are almost to a person, Hillary haters who love to throw out that she's a "liar"--simply don't care. Yes. I'm distressed.
[Excerpt]
Trump wastes no time bashing Kasich during Columbus speech
The day began and ended in a fight over Donald Trump’s incursion into the home turf of 2016 presidential rival John Katich. In between, Trump tweeted that the Ohio governor is a “dummy” and “one of the worst presidential candidates in history.” And in a speech before 14,000 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, Trump pointed to polls showing the billionaire re-establishing his lead both nationally and in early voting states — with Kasich far behind. . .
Read more at: The Columbus Dispatch
I get that don't like Trump or any other GOP candidate.
ReplyDeleteBut please tell me why you like Hillary or Bernie, other then that they are not a Republican.
And can Hillary do anything wrong for you not to vote for her?
Actually, I don't dislike the GOP candidates, just because their Republicans. I actually liked Brian Sandoval. It's not often I like Republican candidates, because I rarely agree with their politics. My dislike for most of this crop has to do much more with disliking a whole lot about them as people AND their politics. Cruz, Carson, Huckabee, Santorum (and before, Jindal) are so amped up to stir heavy doses of their own religion into the mix, that I just can't stomach them. Several others do that as well, maybe not so prominently.
ReplyDeleteI've despised Trump for decades, before I had any clue he'd run as a Republican. I find the man to be a carnival barker, a P.T. Barnum without the charm, and with ridiculous hair. I *agree* with Rand Paul on several things, but I think libertarianism is half sense, half nuts. And again with the goofy hair, what's that about? Back to Trump and Carson (and throw in Fiorina), none have a lick of political experience. None. And they're all prone to telling easily disproven whoppers, and then doubling down on them. And lets not forget that all of the above (except MAYBE Trump) would love it if they could dissolve my marriage, and ignore my civil rights.
Bernie Sanders I like because he's the flip-side of Trump: no filter, no triangulation, no political calculations, or at least not often. I agree with him on most every subject, though sometimes I'm not sure how he wants to get there would be feasible. I think he's great. But I think he's too unkempt, to irascible, too stereotypically Jewish, and too apparently old for the American general public (not that I find any of those thing objectionable myself, just that I don't think the public will go for him).
Hillary Clinton is not a perfect candidate. She *is* the most qualified for the job, however. Could she do something that would make me not vote for her? Possibly, but I don't think she will. She's the opposite of Bernie when it comes to political calculation (and that's not a positive in all ways), and is unlikely to make a huge blunder that can't be fixed. I've thought Mrs. Clinton has gotten a raw deal for the past 20+ years. I've never understood the pure, blind hatred she got from the right. I've seen her in person, and she was dynamic on stage, engaging with the audience. She's religious, but has shown no likelihood of mixing it with policy. She's a bit hawkish politically, maybe a little too cozy with big business and the banks. . .which you'd think would make conservatives like her more. But I think she's by far the best candidate I can vote for to prevent a cretin from getting in. And yeah, I think Trump, Carson and Cruz are cretins.