Story by Emmjay.
With every announcement of Trump’s latest malfeasance, I ask myself how does it come to be that the world’s richest and most powerful nation can contemplate – much less actually elect a complete and utter moronic rapacious self-interested boof-headed lying maniac toupee with attached clown..
I imagine that the main reason is that Trump’s simple message of “Making America Great Again” speaks to the massive underclass of Americans who enjoy no economic power, have sporadic employment in impossibly low-paying jobs – or no jobs at all – as do those inhabiting the rust belt states where manufacturing is a distant memory. We have seen them on TV – toothless denizens living in ramshackle squalor with no prospect of ever having a decent life; generations of poverty, poor health with no access to social services, no access to quality education and NO WAY OUT.
Hillary called them the “deplorables” – and what a vote winner that quip proved not to be !
I guess that if everything is basically shit, what’s there to lose in electing somebody who promises to shift the disenfranchisement across international borders ?“ He’s gonna smash those fat cats in Washington. He’s gonna whack Muslims and anybody else we have been trained to hate. Great ! Damn the collateral damage – full steam ahead. Nobody seems to demand an answer about for whom the new America WILL be great – or just how that greatness will pan out in hillbilly heaven.
How can anyone be so bone-headedly stupid to believe Trump – or even for that matter the local Hansonite loonies ? Hispanics for Trump – is that an oxymoron or what !!
I’m betting that here we have a perfect storm of cause and effect. America’s notoriously unsuccessful education mess (who would call it a system ?) leaves many people unequipped to understand simple facts and concepts, or to be able and wanting to question lies – far less understanding complex issues like their own welfare. The people who unquestioningly do what they’re told to do by the loudest redneck media for the reward of a fleetingly short illusion of being included – in anything – for the first time in their lives.
Does anyone with a scintilla of an education ever vote for arsehats like Trump ? Certainly a large number of gummy hillbillies do ! And women who don’t think rampant misogyny is any big deal. Not when pussy-grabbing has been, for them, a family sport for generations.
“I’s toothless because I cain’t afford no dentist”. Same or worse for medical care.
This is something I just don’t get. Why is it that the impoverished are so against Obamacare ? Why is it that so much disease and ill health is caused by incredibly poor lifestyle choices like diets composed exclusively of fast food, hi carb fructose-laden shit ? Well, it’s because BIG FOOD is monstrously powerful politically and flogs junk food with impunity. And probably also because a black man conceived their first shot at affordable health care.
And guns. How difficult is it to join the dots between a lack of gun control and mass shootings ? The USA – dumb and dumber.
I also struggle understanding why it is that such an allegedly God-fearing nation is so ignorant about ethics. “I have built a fortune selling shit to masses of stupid people. God has helped me do it. So it must be OK. God is not aginst anyone getting rich … and since I don’t have a camel, I’ll be right getting into Heaven.”
I would like to believe that a decent education is a fair preventative – for stopping or reducing the compulsion for anyone to vote for a complete arsehat. That may or may not be right however – I give you Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton, George Brandis, Adolph Abetz, Tony Abbott, Arthur Sinodinis and Barnaby Joyce. Perhaps a fairly good education is a necessary but not sufficient pre-condition for preventing fuckwit voting. I’ll grant you that in the US, it was a diabolically hard choice – between a very questionable Democrat and the ultra-right of the Republicans.
To explain the Trump win, perhaps we need to throw in plebeian susceptibility to swallowing a good media bashing. Maybe a dash of herd mentality, a soupcon of casual indifference, a scattering of snickering malice and a penchant to resort to abuse in lieu of debate.
A Guardian article told a story about some of the heavy hitters from Silicon Valley already fuelling up their Lear jets in anticipation of the coming apocalypse. The piece said that the dude who created PayPal – a Facebook board member has led the charge to a place as far away as you can get from Trump’s shitstorm – New Zealand. When a NZ parliamentarian asked how was it that this chap could buy $4 million worth of lakeside land in the South Island without foreign investment review, the reply was that this chap had already taken the precaution of becoming a New Zealand / US dual citizen …. So, no problem…. Nice. Nothing quite so fine as being in the upwardly mobile.
The education line of argument is a compelling one in my book. How is it that fat cat western nations are ever going to secure peace in the world ? Not by thinking “us and them”.
But by educating our populations to understand that no matter how hard the west bombs the crap out of belligerents, or raises walls against the poorest refugee, peace will be elusive until the west understands the source of belligerence, respects the fact that those folks have a genetically-held belief in their position, a right to fair humane treatment and that force and violence against them will work no better than their use of it against the west. Otherwise we will remain stubbornly in the dark ages of Trump and his ilk. Complex problems are never going to yield to simplistic solutions. We need the hoi-polloi as well as the elite to know stuff – and be able to apply logic to sort out the mess and to be able to fend off Trumpwits. Locking the front and back door is no long-term solution when the hordes come over the barricades.
I read a quote in the Guardian a few days ago that said Trump is a good thing because he will take the US and possibly the rest of the western world to such a low place that the only future direction is up. The way to a strong democracy is via a pernicious fascist dictatorship.
Wow. Great !
warrigal said:
When abnormal becomes the new normal, and there seems no end to the variety of abnormal on offer, we are all left wondering WTF.
That the twitter troll in chief seems not to have any filters working on the output side leaves us all wondering why we ever restrained ourselves when it came to interpersonal and international diffculties.
Why have we not jumped the fence and thumped the neighbour or maybe cheered Duterte as he murdered drug dealers, why do we not glory in the fact that the murderous Bash Allah Salad and his pal PooTin have dealt with the rebellion in Aleppo, why have we not offered money to Marine la Penn’s tilt at turning France back through 70 years so we can enjoy a Vichy holiday with all the fascist trimmings. Why haven’t we, taking a lead from all the corruption and falsehood licensed by the power elite, got the Glock out, given it a polish and looked up Corie Bernardi’s address.
Maybe because we’ll need the Glock and all the ammo later on when this really gets nasty.
Mark my words. This ends in tears.
It’s obvious that Trump wants a fight, needs a fight to keep his ego fed with all the dead bodies which to him will look like a really yuge pile of “I was right!”
This business with Turnbull is just a carney sideshow; a case of “my money vault’s bigger than yours” and anyway America owes Australia nothing, and I won’t be made to look bad even if your little pissant country has laid down its youth time and again in America’s interest.
Trump is just another glittered turd in a world that worships the stink of corruption, the constant neo liberal fluffing of the Murdock sewer and its main outfall, Fox news; and for the rest of the time is terminally distracted by cat videos on youtube.
Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yield!
Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain. Exalted reason,
Resplendent daughter of the head divine,
Wise foundress of the system of the world,
Guide of the stars, who art thou then if thou,
Bound to the tail of folly’s uncurbed steed,
Must, vainly shrieking with the drunken crowd,
Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss.
Accursed, who striveth after noble ends,
And with deliberate wisdom forms his plans!
To the fool-king belongs the world.
Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans) (1801), Act III, sc. vi
I love Schiller!
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sandshoe said:
I read somewhere Jimmy Carter commented it was demanded of him he relinquish his peanut farm to keep the American people satisfied he was meeting the requirements of the position. His comment was reference to the normal becoming the abnormal and vice versa, that Trump by implication passes into the hall of history with complex holdings, it certainly seems from this distance without opposition.
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algernon1 said:
These are indeed troubling times. Is this the new norm. Are we heading for a war.
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warrigal said:
In one form or another it seems to me inevitable. Will it be a big hot war, or a small proxy war, or series of proxy wars? Who knows, the wheels have been wobbling for a few years now, and if this keeps up, at some point they’ll tear off and we’ll be careening down the slippery slope with no way to steer.
Will it be Trump’s fault? No. It will be the responsibility of all those magically thinking rust belt Americans that believed him when he told them he was on their side. Clinical narcissists like Trump only know of one side, their own. He was just being the Trump we all know and loath. They were just being the hopeful nongs they’ve always been. When you’re up to your hips in shit and someone says sell me your soul and I’ll throw you a rope, are you gonna worry about your soul or grab the rope.
They’ve bought a pig in a poke and you never know what you’ve got until you open the poke. The poke isn’t fully opened yet so they can’t really know what they’ve bought just yet but it sure doesn’t smell like bacon.
No, Trump will be the tipping point, whether he lasts the full term or not. It will be others who determine the final outcome because Trump will exit the field when the going gets too tough, no doubt throwing back over his departing shoulder that it was all someone else’s fault and that he personally was a really yuge success and millions of people now think of him a a God.
And then we’ll all be able to serve God and Mammon both. Won’t that be fun?!?
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Mark said:
Stuck in the past Wild Dog, this guy is giving it all a shake. Try thinking.
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Therese Trouserzoff said:
Stunning quote, Waz. I note elsewhere the rising interest in TS Eliot.
And W.B Yeats ….
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? ”
Pretty sure it’s got a massive tortured comb-over !
Will the C21st get a re-run of the 1930s ? Looking more like it I reckon.
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Sea Monster said:
I have a theory that I think explains part of it. I’ll call it the Honest Liar Theory.
Some people trust the obvious liar Trump more than the polished liar Clinton.
As I’ve lamented over the years too I think “progressive” parties and parties of “conscience” need to have a long hard look at themselves.
Serving up a banking industry insider and millionaire (because of that insider status) and trying to argue she’s less corrupt than Trump and wants more crumbs from the big-end-of-town’s plate doesn’t cut it if you want people to take your progressiveness and conscience seriously. Why give one’s opponents ammunition?
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Sea Monster said:
A further thought. The elitism propaganda Trump ran. His opponents will mount a strong and correct argument that he is more elitist. But they will also give him ammunition by sneering at the suburban types, working class and the welfare class.
Oh they eat nasty food! They drink VB! They dress poorly! They own SUVs and Commodores! McMansions! They like nasty sports! Scum! Hillbillies! Rednecks! Brogans!
People have pride and that trumps logic.
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warrigal said:
That is Trump’s logic, to play on the overweaning pride bred in the hearts of all ordinary Americans by two and a half centuries of exceptionalist narratives about truth justice and the American way.
They voted for him but they don’t “deserve” him. He will betray them again and again before the cock crows.
My wonder is why they didn’t vote for Bernie. He at least was offering some chance for positive change though I have to admit very little of it would have gotten through congress, striking at the heart of the American Dream,ie, that the rich should be allowed to enjoy increasing wealth because they are good while working Americans haven’t a rise in real wages since the seventies.
But Trump will sort all that out. He’s told them so, and they’ve believed him and that trumps logic.
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Mark said:
And Clinton and Obama didn’t?
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vivienne29 said:
I want a magic wand to make it all right again.
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Therese Trouserzoff said:
Sounds like a Sarah Palin election promise 🙂
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sandshoe said:
Sarah Pain said in my recall that she could see Russia from her front porch. To have a front porch regardless of the view is to many evidence of magical powers.
We have some difficulty us peoples seeing the perspectives of others until they become our own. Poverty that is so dirt poor it always looks as if the end is nigh is impossible to visit as if inside it. A lust for huntin’ and shootin’ is impossible to grok if the only thing you’ve ever shot is a piece of spitball by means of a rubber band, heard someone yelp ‘Ohhh, gross”.
So complex is what has happened and the responses we are shooting ourselves in the foot if we do not believe in magic and find it every day to see us through in smaller ways and larger. Vivienne wants to make it better. I cannot tell you how unexpectedly glad that makes me feel for this moment.
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algernon1 said:
Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and vary quickly became a dictator. The Germans voted for him. Donald Drumpf was elected as well and very quickly became the prized fuckwit we all expected him to be.
Hitler turned Germany against the Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. Drumpf has turned refugees particularly Muslims into the equivalent for the Jews, the Mexicans into Gypsies.
True to form we have Scott Morrison crowing that the world is following Australia’s lead. What! FFS Scotty piss off, stay in England
I feel for those in the US, they’ve elected a fascist dictator and a dangerous clueless one at that.
Arsehat seems appropriate.
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warrigal said:
Snicker, snicker, he said “arsehat”. Snicker, snicker, oh fuck, guffaw guffaw!
Though as I think on it now, there is something like a cat’s bum about Trump’s mouth when he purses his lips, Just imagine him saying “Yuge” and you get the puckered picture. Perhaps his head does need an “arsehat”.
See now you’ve got me saying it….
ARSEHAT! ARSEHAT! ARSEHAT!
snicker titter, giggle giggle.
ARSEHAT!
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Mark said:
You are playing the man Wild Dog, not like you at all.
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Big M said:
I saw an editorial that claimed Trump to be illiterate. It was quite convincing. He just stares at written pages, eyes not moving, then proudly declares that he has never read a lease agreement, yet signed thousand’s. Seemed quite plausible!!
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