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Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Derp Bench

Trump? Cruz? Carson? Jindal? Perry? Huckster? Frothy? Randroid? All clowns. Killer clowns, sure, but clowns. What is truly terrifying and demoralizing about Trump's antics is the way they spotlight continuities in the present Presidential politics of the GOP: Face it, it's Trumps all the way down this time around in the Republican Party and that is a terrible and dangerous thing. What, I'm supposed to take fired failed Fiorina seriously instead? Or just as dumb but even less affable than W. Jeb! is supposed to be the Very Serious One? I said it back in March, only Kasich worries me even remotely as an opponent to Hillary in 2016. I get it that the Villagers want their horse race narrative for easy drama, but isn't it a pretty dramatic narrative, and certainly just as easy, to observe instead how palpably stoopid batshit crazy the Republican candidates either are or feel they must pretend to be simply to get through their primary right now? 2012 was more than ridiculous enough. Republicans are gonna be selling late-nite juicers and kitchen knives while trading lizard-alien conspiracy newsletters by 2020 at this rate. Given the institutional barriers confining the US to a party duopoly it really represents an ongoing and mounting crisis that one of the two national parties actually on offer is little more than a neo-confederate rump of bigots, lunatics, fools, and con-artists.

4 comments:

jimf said...

Lets hope Trump's ego engorgement lasts beyond the
Republican convention and he decides to run as
an independent candidate. The Ross Perot of
2016!

Donald! Your country **needs** you!

jimf said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/opinion/frank-bruni-haste-hustle-and-scott-walker.html
--------------------
In the formal announcement of his presidential campaign on Monday,
Scott Walker mentioned God right away, introduced himself as a
preacher’s son and invoked religion repeatedly, as he has
throughout a perpetual candidacy that stretches back to his
college days, when he told the Marquette University yearbook:
“I really think there’s a reason why God put all these political
thoughts in my head.” . . .

We know from the biographies of him so far that he has been
absorbed in those “political thoughts” since at least the start
of college, before he could have possibly developed any fully
considered, deeply informed set of beliefs or plan for what
to do with power.

I suspect that we’ll learn, with just a bit more digging, that
he was mulling campaign slogans in the womb and ran his first
race in the neighborhood wading pool, pledging to ease restrictions
on squirt guns and usher in a ban on two-piece bathing suits. . .

“I love America,” Walker said in Monday’s big speech. That was
his opening line and an echo of what so many contenders say.

I trust that they all do love this country. But from the way they
pander, shift shapes and scheme, I wonder if they love themselves
just a little more.
====


Some people are just born that way.

And, of course, they don't all end up on the political right:


http://www.salon.com/2006/09/29/mcgreevey_7/

http://sampler-rule.blogspot.com/2013/11/prod-sampler-111913.html
-------------
I wasn't the first altar boy to behave in a cocky way, though I may have
set new standards for self-assurance. When the bishop of Trenton, George Ahr,
came to say Mass at our church, I remember feeling obliged to welcome him
myself. "Your Eminence," I said, extending my small hand, "I'm Jimmy McGreevey,
a fourth-grader, and altar boy -- one of the youngest -- and a member of
[this club and that] at St. Joe's. I extend a warm welcome on behalf of
myself and the other students." The bishop was gracious, and we spoke for
a number of minutes before I realized that the entire congregation had turned
to look at us. I could see my grandmother mouthing to my father,
"Look at Jimmy, he's talking to the bishop." Most Catholics were intimidated
by such visits from high Church leaders, as my father recalls.
"We all treated the bishop like he was a visitor from Heaven. You didn't
care. You'd be talking to anybody and everybody."

It's no wonder my father used to call me "my little statesman." From a very
young age I saw myself as a leader, and when the other kids were worrying
about what to do with their summer vacations, I was already setting ridiculously
outsized political goals for myself. . .

-- James E. McGreevey, _The Confession_
====


http://www.salon.com/2006/09/29/mcgreevey_7/
-------------
Of this wild trip, from Nixon-loving Catholic schoolboy to Democratic kingpin
of the Soprano state, McGreevey is sanctimonious in the way that only reformed
sinners and former addicts can be. And, of course, since the quickest path
to public rehabilitation is to declare you have an addiction, McGreevey
now views his life through the fuzzy gauze of the 12-step program. He
claims to have been an addict all along; he was hooked, not on drugs, drink,
sex or gambling, but simply on “being central in the world, to being accepted
and adored in the way that celebrities are adored — by strangers, in abundance.”
In other words, he is an egomaniac.
====

Dale Carrico said...

“I love America,” Walker said

Like a glutton loves his lunch. You know the movie.

jimf said...

> All clowns. Killer clowns, sure, but clowns.

Do you suppose _My Weekly Reader_ is available
on microfilm? Inquiring minds want to know.

http://www.kookootheklown.com/index6.html