Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

But he tweeted a picture of himself eating a taco salad with an accompanying message saying he loves "the Hispanics."

You mean that wasn't enough? What more do those people want?

 

Ezra Klein is such an eloquent writer; he did great work this week, regardless of your political bent. Not fancy. Clean writing. Clear arguments.

But I don't agree with his central thesis.

Trump doesn't care if anyone is afraid. Trump wants them mad.

Well, more to the point, Trump knows people are mad. He's cooking them a four-course dinner of anger, cynicism, pride and impatience.

Trump snuggles right up to that impotent rage - that the world is shit - and plays upon it. He's a spectacularm thrill-ride liar who gets high marks for honesty, because, as he fires off these ludicrous, pissy, inconsistent emotions, he is being a kind of honest. Truth and honesty aren't the same thing, which is why he's a liar, but comes off as a fiery truth-teller.

Trump blames everyone else for everything that's bad. Well...most of us do. We're human. So is he. We're angry a lot. So is he. Most of us don't see our own weaknesses and faults in the ways our lives have been structured. Neither does he. Most of us think of ourselves as relatively good people who are getting an increasingly bad hand. So does he.

Most of us think, if I were in charge, it'd be better and different. So does he.

Trump, with the three-decade aid of conservative media - plays right to that. He plays to it beautifully. When he says "I am your voice," he's right. He's a reflection of where we are and where right-wing media steered us to be.

the schizophrenic nature of the GOP is gone right now. It's pure and darkly beautiful, like the creature in Alien. Its blood is acid. It's actually kind of wondrous to see the party so freely drop any pretense of optimism or gauzy hope or American exceptionalism - and still see all the various parts of the party stay on board! Major Christian groups? Here! GOP establishment? Here! One-issue voters on guns and abortion? Here! Big business? Hey, you want trade wars and your immigration policies will deprive us of all the illegals we like to exploit, but here! I actually appreciate the total abandonment of fake principles, even if it is short-lived. It's so dutiful.

The Trump who talked Thursday night hates America. Whether he does or not, who knows, but that speech hated America. I busted out an old Michael Crichton novel afterward - Rising Sun - which is a 300-page fictionalized bitchfest about how Japan was kicking our ass back in the 1980s. Trump's speech mirrored all the blowhards in that book. It was the most down-in-the-mouth speech since Jimmy Carter's malaise speech.

But here's the thing: Most of us hate America, too. That's a truth. We shouldn't hate it. Even people who say they love it, some of them really seem to hate it. Most of us are doing pretty damn well. But we do hate it, and that's probably because we value honesty too much. After many years, we now have too high of an appreciation for our feelings. We trust them too much. We shouldn't. They're sometimes wrong.

And I'd argue - some may disagree, some will disagree - our love affair with feelings is why addiction and suicide and heart disease from eating too much are the growing problems they've grown to be. That's why the garbled platform of Black Lives Matter is so vulnerable to professional activist hustles. That's why Bernie Sanders, who ran, more or less, on the college professor at the coffee shop platform, which morphed into "hey! hey! hey! no! hey! you can't! this is! hey! wrong! not right! hey!" campaign -- truly a thinner gruel than Trump's offering, a total embarrassment of unicorn policies and fairytale thinking - was so successful with millennials.

That's why our police force, in far too many circumstances, doesn't chill the fuck out. That's why we've created a name for many unproductive feelings and behaviors, which overwhelms the mental health system and blocks real reform for the seriously mentally ill. That's why Twitter flips out every time somebody doesn't say something perfectly and gets put "on blast" for imprecise wording. Hell, I'd argue that's why we've lost an appreciation for editors who might challenge writers' feelings with reasonable thoughts. We just wanna feel what we wanna feel, and we wanna to feel it whenever we feel like it. You feel you. I feel me.

It makes us weak and prone to manipulation.

Trump, a master in human weakness, knows it. And he eats America's feelings whole. He's a celebrity and a performer. He appeals right to our certainty that we're getting screwed, and somehow he is, too, and right to our sense that only a single, great individual - with the best ideas hiring the best people - can solve it.

Clinton, wholly competent but saddled with a corrective spirit - a person raised to push back sentimentality - is a toxic feeling brew. She loves details and most of her falsehoods luxuriate in them. She cuts corners and lies when threatened, for cheap, foolish, weak reasons. Far from being a spectacular, thrill-ride liar - which Trump is, and loves being, as much as we love that he is that - she is almost constitutionally incapable of avoiding political shuffle and the 1,000s of white lies that come with it. I would describe Clinton as more or less possessing a dishonest personality, but I know also that's how politics is.

But Clinton lies in a way so vexing and unpleasant to her aura - and explains these lies with nuanced conviction and complexity that we can't bear to wait through -- that she does not enjoy the perks of being an unadulterated bullshit artist.

When women lie, it's so stridenly unvirtuous of them. When men do, we often get a kick out of the size and scope of the lie. It's entertaining.

Clinton's lack of entertainment value - that good feeling with get from Trump, like it's always been a circus and at long last, we get the asshole who plays this rathole American democracy for exactly what it is! -- is her real weakness.

What feeling does she evoke? Well, I think for many she evokes hate. But, to be perfectly arrogant, I don't think it's because she's particularly hateworthy. I think it's she represents the kind of America we've been, and we've grown to hate it, in part because we've told to hate it, in part because we've grown emotionally immature in an age when our access to information is greater than ever, and we're growing less and less emotionally capable of handling it.

Should Trump win, a broad kind of hate for America - for its complexities and imperfections - wins. It'll be political porn, if you will, the night we tell ourselves to fuck off. Trump will be in charge. We can kiss his ass.

 

Get the fuck over yourself ...

 

Did Alma write that, or is all of that Ezra? Where's the link if so?

 

So you searched it out and watched that? I can't imagine why anyone would seek that out. What in the fuck is wrong with you?

 

I don't believe you understood it correctly.

 

I agree with him, too.

And you're right-- you can improve your oratory skills, but you can't change your voice.

Now take this same issue, and apply it to women's body types, hair, clothes, mothering ability (if they choose to be a mother), sexiness (or lack thereof)... clavicles... an infinite amount of things to nitpick, grate on nerves, etc etc...

I've posted about this before... And I was told, it's like Ludacris said-- "Lady in the street, freak in the bed"-- simple as that. Easy peasy !

Finding the right balance between:

modulating all the things that make us women-- things like a higher-pitched voice, which can be unpleasing at a certain volume--

and

giving off an aura of strength-- strength enough to do a job no woman has ever done before

and

not taking shit off anybody (without seeming catty or bitchy)

and

maintaining that magical weight that is neither too fat nor too thin

and

dressing for "your" "age"-- commiserate with what society expects, lest you appear to be "trying too hard" on one end of the spectrum or "letting yourself go" on the other

and

appearing to be sane

and

doing what the freak you want to do-- if I want to wear a frilly floral dress to a meeting because that's what I feel like wearing, but I really shouldn't

is

the hardest thing about being a woman.

 

Wanted to see if it was real or a manipulated scene like other alleged barbaric killings. They fuzzy'd out the boy's head so you don't actually see the decapitation. But you see blood, and then you see guy hold aloft the boy's fuzzy'd out head.

 

Sounds riveting!

 

The candidate who eats matzo ball soup has my vote.