All that said, he's made frank bigotry mainstream again in a way that seems very damaging.
I wonder to what extent it helps that Trump taps directly into the popular/vulgar aspirationalism of "what I would do if I had a billion dollars" - that was basically his brand before he was a politician, right? Gilt and ivory everywhere.
I've said before that a huge chunk of the Republican base is best seen as a Morton Downey / Maury Povich / pro wrestling audience. They are not driven by philosophy or ideology and utterly uninterested in facts. They just want a forum to yell insults at people and groups they have decided they don't like. Trump is giving them that, and freeing them up to be maximally offensive in the guise of "opposing political correctness". The notion that Trump will go too far and start losing their support completely misreads his appeal to this demographic. The whole reason Ben Carson's star is fading has nothing to do with his complete ineptitude on policy questions; it's about his calm and polite demeanor. Totally wrong face for this election. Same thing with Jeb Bush. If he used the "I don't come down to where you work and knock the dicks out of your mouth" at the next debate, his numbers would double overnight.
This election will increasingly resemble every news site's comment section as it continues.
If Jeb's debate prep guys are lurkers, that would be just great.
I'm not certain he could deliver that line correctly, but I'd like to see him try.
"There's an old saying in Florida: Come down to where I work once... where you work... work me twice... won't get my dick knocked out again."
I buy 3 for a lot of the Republican base, but check out this lady. It's not the same motivation. I mean, she's totally right that the people on her TV are lying to her, as is her president. The system is rotten and people are getting screwed. Trump uses that disaffection and bigotry to establish affinity with these folks, and then says "yadda yadda WINNING" on any policy question, and that's good enough for them.
The headlines really should be screaming about how Republican primary voters are out of touch with America.
Sure people on TV are lying to her. But it's a special sort of delusion that doesn't understand that Trump is also on the TV lying to her. And his lies aren't even convincing lies, just lies that flatter her prejudices.
I don't think 7.video is that out of sync with 3, with just a slightly greater emphasis on hating the status quo.
Also, the woman in the video is not the average person caught up in Trump's wake but a NH House of Reps member whose husband was a volunteer goon for Cliven Bundy.
I am reminded of the many times between 2001 and 2009 when I interrupted other people's long and tortured perorations about the Dubster's many offenses and faults with a curt "He's a fraternity asshole."
"He was like one of those characters in an 18th-century comedy meant to embody a particular flavor of human folly." is a sentence I would like to have written.
I take solace in noting that America ultimately didn't cotton to Sarah Palin.
Thanks for 10.2, Minivet. Just as the woman in the link in 7 comes from the birther/sovereign citizen movement, Trump's spokeswoman -- noted in ogged's Cockroaches post -- is a Texas Tea Partier apparently subscribing to the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory who's also a big fan of the Liar! Liar! school of political activism:
When I asked about her activist career, she told me that when "you realize that you've been lied to your whole life, it's an eye-opening experience."
She's a former Ted Cruz supporter, and ran for Congress herself in 2014 (loser).
Anyway, the mainstreaming that's worrisome happened before Trump. I don't want to tell ogged and other Muslims that they're worried needlessly, of course, but it's worth bearing in mind that Trump's support is still just at 29% or so of the Republican primary electorate nationally, which means that 70-ish% do not support him; and the Republican primary electorate is itself a minority of the electorate at large. We can thank the mainstream media for giving people like Katrina Pierson, who is frankly half a step away from Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, a respectful hearing at all.
The current RealClearPolitics average is sitting closer to 31 than 29, and the more inclusive Huffington Post aggregator has it at almost 36.
What I'd worry about though is that even if 70% or so don't support him right now his approval rating is over 60% among Republicans, and at this point it's hard to imagine what revelations about him are going to serious damage that. He's definitely popular enough to represent something seriously dangerous about Americans in general.
He's definitely popular enough to represent something seriously dangerous about Americans in general.
No doubt. I just don't think it's a new kind of dangerousness. The rise of the Tea Party, the sovereign citizens movement, and so on are enough to tell us that the danger has been growing for some time. Americans for Prosperity and ALEC have been fostering some of it; the Heritage Foundation has.
Electorally speaking, Ian Millhiser has a piece on the delegate math that would likely keep Trump from the nomination. The same considerations apply to Cruz.
That doesn't change the fact that some (minority) portion of the American population has been, shall we say, radicalized.
I've already read speculations about whether or not the GOP's best bet this election is to take a loss on the presidency by screwing Trump over enough that he runs as a third party. It would mean abandoning the presidency, but it would also help them avoid a lot of the damage that would happen if he were running nationally with an 'R' next to his name. And while splitting the vote would be bad for whoever takes the presidential nomination the same splitting wouldn't show up at the Senate/House level (or not much anyway). So they'd have a good shot at keeping the legislature, and the press would be excited and talk endlessly about how the GOP isn't really a bunch of racist crazies after all and the adults are back in charge of it and so on like they desperately want to.
Then they just need to demagogue the shit out of Clinton for four years and run someone even remotely sane sounding under a "It's Time For A Change!" slogan in 2020 and they'd have a strong shot.
Interesting: where have you read this?
Also, 17: his approval rating is over 60% among Republicans
Where is this coming from? I mean which polls? First question regarding polls will always be: are those merely registered Republicans or likely voter Republicans? Also, registered Republicans are at an all-time low.
I'm not sure an alleged favorability rating of 60% among Republicans amounts to much relative to the overall electorate.
As always, this election will come down to get-out-the-vote efforts. I haven't seen figures on how many registered Independents actually vote.
Apt description of Michael Bay:
Bay's bewildering brand of big-budget, value-free spectacle cinema, seemingly detached from all meaning and all ideology, actually makes him one of the signature political filmmakers of our age. He's the Leni Riefenstahl of late capitalism.
(From a discussion of a preview of his BENGHAZI!!!! film.)
Quinnipac on Dec. 2 says 64/27 among Republicans, and everyone else kind of dislikes him a bit (where "a bit" means something like 80/10 among Democrats so it's a big bit). And as little a group as Republicans are the chances that they won't coalesce around whoever becomes the candidate are low, so there really would need to be something huge happening to get them below their floor in the mid-40s.
The problem about Independents, which the press reallyreallyreally loves to talk about because it lets them repeat their (not actually true) narrative about partisans on each side and sensible people who the Democrats have to move rightward to win over in the center is that they aren't actually a real group. They're just kind of a jumble of very low information voters who like to think of themselves as above politics, people who vote exactly the same as either Democrats or Republicans but like to imagine that they aren't taking a side but are carefully evaluating things as they stand, and (I think possibly the biggest set) people who are either to the left of Democrats or the right of Republicans (or were when they decided to start calling themselves Independents, whether they are or aren't right now). So the figures for how independents go, how many vote, etc. don't usually mean much predictively, because they could mean almost anything. (Usually it's really close to the numbers you see when the whole group is totaled up, because there's sort of a balancing thing going on.)
3.last: This election will increasingly resemble every news site's comment section as it continues.
Basically, Trump is what would happen if the comments section became a human and ran for President.
21: That was a good article, but I have an irrational dislike for the term "late capitalism". Maybe it's High Middle Capitalism? How do we know?
Man, Salon just can't get over that junior year abroad.
It's weird to see Bay described as detached from all ideology, since he seems to me to have some pretty clear stuff going on in his movies generally: a really aggressive (increasingly, and creepily) set of gender politics, some very, very strange all-bad-guys-are-preestablished stuff*, and an almost cartoonish level of militarism (or, in the most recent Transformers movie, Chinese nationalism)**.
* Transformers 2 starts with the US military assassinating some decepticons hiding in, I think, Beijing. As in, hiding and doing nothing so people don't know they're there. It's bizarre.
**No seriously the movie just turns on a switch about half way through. It's amazing. I can only assume that someone showed him the sales figures for his last few films broken down by country or something.
25: thanks! I will try to get the whole thing done before Christmas. Seems to be flowing fairly freely now. Then it's back to Hannay...
22: Thanks for the link.
The problem about Independents [...] is that they aren't actually a real group
I know. I'm only interested in the proportion of them who vote. Never mind how they vote: they're still, per the link to Gallup in 20, 43% of registered voters. Any polls purporting to relate the tendencies of likely voters need to include them.
Can we get a Nixoniad link again. I like to think my detective skills are strong but I can't find it.
It is cunningly concealed at nixoniad.blogspot.com.
It's also the first google hit for "nixoniad".
Fletcher was pretty versatile, it seems—responsible for Patton, Fear and Loathing, and The Right Stuff.
34: it recently blew my mind to learn that George Miller directed the Mad Max films, Babe 2: Pig in the City and Happy Feet.
I got there but somehow convinced myself it had to be a different Nixoniad.
I don't know about Happy Feet, but Babe 2: Pig in the City is really kind of disturbing. My impression is that Happy Feet is standard kids fair, but this... isn't.
I remember at least one or two reviews mentioning kids leaving the theater crying. I don't think people were entirely prepared for it when it came out, especially given the preceding movie. It bombed pretty hard.
The bull terrier's explanation for why he's so dangerous (after SPOILERS! Babe doesn't die and saves him) is really magnificent too:
it's in the bloodline. We were once warriors. Now there's just the urge. A murderous shadow lies hard across my soul.
42: Jesus. Suddenly it doesn't seem so incongruous after all.
Of course, it was a DIFFERENT George Miller who made the other 1990s family movies about animals. (Andre, Zeus And Roxanne)
Holy cow, Army is beating Navy at halftime.
To make it fair they should switch to, like, water polo after the half. See how they like playing in their opponent's natural environment.
27.1: That's the "seemingly" that the full article goes into in some detail.
||
This is hilarious.* "Plausible deniability? Fuck that! Give me cash!" I predict this will have a really big no-effect on the extent to which the Paris accords work out in practice.
*In that "oh, yeah we're all going to die" way, I mean.
|>
What's VW's price for a study showing that the Native Americans were pretty much the aggressors?
$50 more than it cost to blame Chivington (sp?) for a massacre.
50: Sad given the shit Michael Mann had had to put with.
And this strikes me as the thread for this little gem published in the NY Times magazine literally a few days before the invasion of Poland.
"Herr Hitler at Home in the Clouds"
"A wide semi-circle of mountains swinging from the north around to the west and south leaves a gap in the east through which he can look over into what used to be Austria."
"He is fond of his climb above the clouds, and no one can say how far east his mental vision roves."
"Hitler can be a good listener."
OMG I hope that is real. Please let that be real. Did the NYT Magazine exist in 1939?
Wikipedia says it did. It could be real! How was that piece not discovered during the first great phase of left-blogish NYT criticism in the mid-00s
Mentioned towards the end of this article on the "reinvention" of Hitler. HAs excerpts from some other pieces incluing this from Vogue:
"On the side of a mountain, the chalet has a suburban neatness, with a sun porch and canaries, and its rooms, like this one, a cozy podge of clocks, dwarfs, and swastika cushions."
The "reinvention of Hitler" article reminds me of Roses for Stalin, a painting that still cracks me up after years because of how unresponsive and Photoshopped-in Stalin looks.
Are the cushions actually shaped like a swastika? That sounds uncomfortable to sit on.
The Nixoniad is really fantastic stuff.
Dwarfs is right. No one spelled it with a 'v' until Tolkien.
62: my surprise was not at the spelling, but at the idea that Hitler's "suburban"-styled country house was apparently littered with very short people. wtf hitler do you think you are peter the great or some shit like that.
63: thanks!
64: I'm guessing it refers to garden gnomes, which are "Gartenzwerge" in German, where the dictionary definition of "Zwerg" is "dwarf".
Dictionary translation, that is.
Your country house isn't decorated with short people? The UK really is a different place.
So now I can say "You know who else liked garden gnomes?"
(And ditto on the Nixoniad.)
Thirded (or, really, echoing the sentiment expressed by several people) very well done.
Can someone explain the nixonoid references? I don't get it.
Just Google and read the first link. It's good.
Googling nixon nyad led me to look up the wikipedia page for Diana Nyad, who wasn't kidding when she told people she was "off to swim".
Because I'm bored, I tried to see if I could find more pictures of Snow White with Hitler's face. To my great surprise, I could not. I found a picture of Hitler with D-cups, but there was nothing Snow-Whitey about it.
73: I'm going to need to know the object of which I am googling.
Relatively modest. And she's underage, so back off.
If it will keep you from googling Snow Whites cup size, here.
Googling "Snow White cup size" is surprisingly uninformative.
Ha! 81 without seeing 80. To 80, I found the website but my point is that it's a giant wall of text that I'm unwilling to read without some hint about what it is that I'm supposed to be reading about.
Broadband service outages. Over-the-counter intoxicants.
Open Standpipe: Ajay, who you might know from here, wrote an essay based on the premise that Snow White was 22 with a D-cups Shakespeare was alive and writing historic plays about post-War America.
Also, what ever happened with your mystery bathroom?
Close Standpipe.
73: I'm going to need to know the object of which I am googling.
Aren't lawyers supposed to know how to research things? It's discussed in this very thread, as is a google search to use.
Lawyers are taught to never ask questions they don't know the answer to. I learned this because my dad was always watching Rumple of the Bailey (spelling approximate).
93: I know how; I was looking for motivation. 90 is what I needed, IYKWIMAITYD.
To 91, we just stopped using it. At some point I would like to replace toilet and perhaps re-route plumbing, but for now it's just off limits.
I guess we always knew that the alien robots were going to try to take over. What I didn't expect, though, is that urple would be among the first to fall. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at how inadept the aliens robots are at mimicking his style.
It's "Rumpole of the Bailey." It was really bothering me that I couldn't find that show listed on Wikipedia. If it didn't really exist, it meant that my memories were implanted and thus I must be a replicant.
Right. Those cost about $4 a pop. For the price of five, you could get a box of wine. Probably for the price of four in a state that doesn't have as much liquor control as this one.
I suppose I also have nutmeg and whatever else goes in a pumpkin pie, but I'm not going to try Pumpkin-Spice Pinot Noir.
Not to mention arriving oak pumpkin spice poison garage band arugula Devonshire retrofit.
One or more of us needs to say goodnight and head to sleep. I'd assume it was urple except that I can't spell argulala and he can.
I don't understand 103 but I would pay a lot for a pumpkin pie delivery service right now.
103 is confusing but 104 makes sense?
I will pay $40 for a slice of pumpkin pie.
i don't remember exactly what I wa trying to write in 104, but I'm sure it was something disparaging about your pumpkin spice lattes.
You could probably find a store open that will sell you one for less. I have only the spices that go into it, not the actual pumpkin.
Ok fine $50 for a slice of pie. What is the market clearing price??
111: if your "store " doesn't deliver, it is useless to me.
$60. Pumpkin pie. I only need one slice.
Maybe an Uber guy will get you a slice.
Economists say this is literally not possible. And yet here we are. $65.
If nobody bring urple a slice of pie, all the economics departments will have to close.
I just searched uber for punkpkim pie and got "no results found". Offer is now $70.
Don't knock the Ogallala Aquifer. I was raised on it's slightly over-nitrated waters.
Is Webvan or Peapod still a thing?
bringmepumpkinpie.com appears to be available, amazingly.
Until just now. But I'll give it to you for $75.
I had a coworker in 2000/2001 who had previously worked in customer service at webvan. Lots of angry callers, apparently.
There's Google Shopping Express, I think. Maybe not everywhere, but I see their vans every now and then.
104-105: Best comment pair ever.
We have a delivery service that will bring you food from a variety of local restaurants. But pumpkin pie isn't a very restaurant-y dessert. Also, it's pretty late for them. At least here.
I don't know quite what happened between 72 and 105 but all I want for Christmas is for it to happen again.
I'd pay a lot for pumpkin pie delivery service too. It's an important fall food* for me and I haven't seen it here.
*Meaning you've got to have it at least once or your fall is incomplete. Like summer and pink lemonade.
I'd pay a lot for pumpkin pie delivery service too. It's an important fall food* for me and I haven't seen it here.
*Meaning you've got to have it at least once or your fall is incomplete. Like summer and pink lemonade.
Should be easy for Amazon to roll out in Arrakis. The drone infrastructure already exists.
It's "Rumpole of the Bailey." It was really bothering me that I couldn't find that show listed on Wikipedia. If it didn't really exist, it meant that my memories were implanted and thus I must be a replicant.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Barristers on fire off Ludgate Hill. I watched wigs glitter in the dark near the Holborn Viaduct. All these moments will be lost in time, like emails in disclosure. Time to die."
I suppose I also have nutmeg and whatever else goes in a pumpkin pie, but I'm not going to try Pumpkin-Spice Pinot Noir
Aren't pumpkin spices pretty close to the spices in mulled wine? In which case that could actually be quite good.
DOUGLAS (murderously): You ... took my Petrus '05 ... and you ... mulled it?
ARTHUR: Well, not properly. I don't have the stuff. But, you know, I whacked in some fruit juice and some sugar and the rest of the orange Tic Tacs, and then I just blitzed it in the microwave! It'll be close enough!
133 is good. Reminds me slightly of the "Dad's Army v. Predator" concept we came up with the other week.
"WHAT DA HELL AH YOU?"
"Don't tell him, Pike!"
Also I would give a digit to hear John Le Mesurier ask Arthur Lowe: "Oh, dear, sir. What's the matter? Does the bank have you pushing too many pencils?"
