I watched about ten minutes of the Trump-CNN spectacle. That’s all I could stomach before having to change the channel. That’s all the time it took until I felt utterly filthy and in need of a hot, cleansing shower to wash it all away.
And, I’ve seen it all before. It brings back way too many bad memories and reminds me way too much of an old joke: “Why do you hit yourself in the head with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.” But it is no joke. That man really wants to put us all through this anew – and with a heaping dose of revenge to lubricate it. I have no idea why any sane, reasonable person would want to go back to that era of misery, conflict, daily drama, and narcissism on steroids and relive it for another four years. It must be about the cruelty. And the unrestrained anger. And the irrational hatred. And Trump as the enabler who gleefully lights the fuse. No other explanation makes sense to me – unless it is something even worse that my adult mind simply cannot comprehend. I don’t have any desire whatsoever to find out what it is. The rest of the civilized world joins us in saying: Please, America, don’t do this to us all again. Once was more than enough.
They want to relive it because feeling the anger, cruelty, and hatred is all they have to approximate the feeling they have some power and agency in their lives. They know they are being tricked and cheated by all sides. They used to have a helot population they could take out their frustrations on, but we've changed the rules on them -- they aren't supposed to be mean to the blacks and the Jews and the sluts and the others they formerly could terrorize and bully with impunity. Now on top of having no way to let that out, they are aware the former helots may actually want to send back some of the stuff that used to flow down upon them. So not only are they frustrated, they are frightened.
Now Trump comes along and tells them -- go ahead, bully the others. I'm with you. We'll do it together. You can get that feeling back.
Of course they are going to fall for it. Back to the good old days when a man had to eat buckets of shit on the job and bow and scrape to the Man, but could always go home at the end of the day and take it out on his weaker spouse and kids.
"I've seen it all before" is what I figured even before it started, which is why I watched none of it. I am puzzled why anyone tuned it in other than a member of the cult looking for their daily (or more often) dopamine hit.
True. I think that many of the people in the crowd that were laughing believe the "witch hunt" narrative that is so carefully crafted by the media outlets and political representatives they listen to. I don't think most of them think rape is funny. They think E. Jean Carroll is a fake, an operative of the democrats, a tool of the "deep state". I think some of them were laughing because they believe the trial was a "fake" performance. That's why I don't think the argument of asking the people that laughed about the rape testimony how they would feel if someone raped their daughter (as someone suggested in the comments) would influence them. Of course they would be devasted if someone raped their daughter. The right wing media, elected officials, the former President of the United States--powerful people with a lot of influence--are funneling a tidal wave of misinformation at them. Until I had friends that were mislead by religious zealots and cults leaders, I didn't realize how easy it was to influence, or out right brainwash, people (and this was in the days before the fire hose of on-line media existed). When my own older brother proclaimed that 9-11 was an "inside job" that it wasn't a commercial airliner that crashed into Tower 1, that it was a military aircraft, I was shocked. He is the smart one in the family, a graduate of the University of Chicago, a decent, sensitive, kind man. I love my brother, but . . . WTF??
Sorry about the family rift. Happens all too often. However, there were millions of "smart, college-educated" Germans who believed Goebbels dis-information. He did it for political power. Our dis-information industry does it for money. Having a college degree doesn't mean that you magically got critical thinking skills or media literacy in the process.
That's very question I've been asking very smart people, including the ones who write for The Bulwark and Judd Legum. No substantive answers emerge. Mostly I've been told that the First Amendment would preclude any muzzling of the dis-information industry. Frankly, I don't believe that the First Amendment was meant as a suicide poison pill cleverly hidden in the Constitution.
Loved this: "the First Amendment was meant as a suicide poison pill cleverly hidden in the Constitution." Hysterical! But no, I don't believe it either. So what's left, lawsuits?
I may have said it before, but it's like we are back in high school, the cool bad boy has taken over the room while arguing with the teacher, and there is no principle's office.
Some of us want to see if he can make the teacher cry. The whole thing is memorable, and entertaining, and certainly better than the teacher moving the class on from the rebel's behavior.
This MAGA brand is stick it to so-called authority, without a worry for tomorrow
Except he is not the cool bad guy. He is the factory owner who employs most of the town's son's parents who no one will touch or his father will fire their parents.
What Trump offers and what America yearns to buy is simple.
You are going always to be pushed down, cheated, tricked, robbed, lied to, and taken as the chumps and marks you are, but in exchange for your acquiescence in what we are doing to you, we are restoring to you a set of victims which you yourselves can treat vilely, upon whom you can inflict pain and suffering, and on whom you can cast your fears and your anger.
The elites took that away from you, with their rules about what jokes you could tell, and what N words you were allowed to use, and which people you had to allow a place in line and a seat on the bus. They changed the rules, and that took away the only means you had of not being at the very bottom of everything. It wasn't really dignity, but it was better than the indignity others had, and you used to be allowed to force the others to swallow it, just the way we forced you to swallow it. The elites took that away, making you and them both all -- well, N-worders. They took away the only thing that made your miserable subordination endurable -- the privilege of making the N-worders' subordination even less endurable.
And worst of all, they even took away your right to use the N word. And your right to lie to yourself about not being a despicable person.
We are still going to step all over you, we are still going to fleece you to the point of flensing off your very flesh, but we are going to give you back the one thing you had. We will give you back the lie you want to tell about yourself. We will give you back your hate and your fear. We give you back the privilege of being, in your own small way, vile.
The funny thing is Trump is the super elite trust fund baby monster who expects the peasants to die for him. I bet if you asked one of the female supporters how they would feel if he sexually abused her daughter, she would say, honored. I bet he has followers who'd offer him their young girls because they have no real moral compasses whatsoever.
MAGA has achieved complete equality of the sexes. Both MAGA women and MAGA men slut shame, laugh about rape, and admire stars who assault women. At least, I conclude that from the audience at the CNN-Trump Circus.
Good description of what Trump offers: victimhood. This is right from the Putin playbook. I believe that Americans, for the most part, have no idea how bad acquiescing to a strongman is.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
It's the way the white elite kept the lid on in the one-party autonomous region of the former Confederacy from reconstruction until it (briefly) broke up about 1960... and it is back, but this time it will be National. It works because it focuses on the part of human nature arising out of the basest of the base heirachy of needs.
No, Maslow may have focused on the sunny side of his hierarchy of needs, but he was fully aware of what happens when the base needs of his pyramid weren't met.
Cheap grace. They are so stuck in their view of where they are in the upcoming rapture that they forgot the whole part where he'll tell a lot of people "I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers."
The basest base of us laughs, chortles. This is who we have become. The rot is infecting the ailing body and democracy is dying a painful death.
"Increasingly, Chris Licht is to CNN what Elon Musk is to Twitter." Turn the channel or better yet turn the TV off and read On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder.
Well stated. I feel sick to think we have to relive yet another Trump candidacy, as we collectively try to claw out way out of that nightmare. Groundhog Day, over and over.
The whole system is definitely broken, that we are stuck in this horror show.
His platform is simple: I hate the same people and institutions that you hate. And you should hate whoever and whatever I tell you to. Elect me to achieve our communal revenge on all of them.
Trump (and his media avatar, Tucker) were both never accepted by polite society, despite being born with silver spoons in their mouths. And their hurt, anger, and embarrassment over that rejection has led to unimaginable calamities.
Everybody is a victim. It’s just that in the cases of Donald and Tucker, they are both such examples of walking and talking piles of human excrement that it’s hard to care.
I watched about ten minutes of the Trump-CNN spectacle. That’s all I could stomach before having to change the channel. That’s all the time it took until I felt utterly filthy and in need of a hot, cleansing shower to wash it all away.
And, I’ve seen it all before. It brings back way too many bad memories and reminds me way too much of an old joke: “Why do you hit yourself in the head with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.” But it is no joke. That man really wants to put us all through this anew – and with a heaping dose of revenge to lubricate it. I have no idea why any sane, reasonable person would want to go back to that era of misery, conflict, daily drama, and narcissism on steroids and relive it for another four years. It must be about the cruelty. And the unrestrained anger. And the irrational hatred. And Trump as the enabler who gleefully lights the fuse. No other explanation makes sense to me – unless it is something even worse that my adult mind simply cannot comprehend. I don’t have any desire whatsoever to find out what it is. The rest of the civilized world joins us in saying: Please, America, don’t do this to us all again. Once was more than enough.
https://www.theonion.com/trump-condemned-for-giving-platform-to-cnn-1850429121
Trump may light the fuse - but the base brings the dynamite. He is nothing - NOTHING - without them.
You have a higher tolerance for pain than I do. I cannot listen to his voice for 5 seconds before hitting the fast forward button.
They want to relive it because feeling the anger, cruelty, and hatred is all they have to approximate the feeling they have some power and agency in their lives. They know they are being tricked and cheated by all sides. They used to have a helot population they could take out their frustrations on, but we've changed the rules on them -- they aren't supposed to be mean to the blacks and the Jews and the sluts and the others they formerly could terrorize and bully with impunity. Now on top of having no way to let that out, they are aware the former helots may actually want to send back some of the stuff that used to flow down upon them. So not only are they frustrated, they are frightened.
Now Trump comes along and tells them -- go ahead, bully the others. I'm with you. We'll do it together. You can get that feeling back.
Of course they are going to fall for it. Back to the good old days when a man had to eat buckets of shit on the job and bow and scrape to the Man, but could always go home at the end of the day and take it out on his weaker spouse and kids.
"I've seen it all before" is what I figured even before it started, which is why I watched none of it. I am puzzled why anyone tuned it in other than a member of the cult looking for their daily (or more often) dopamine hit.
I have no words. :-( Your words will suffice for now.
Trump is a skilled hatred miner and there is a rich vein running through America's core, created by the elites of the dis-information industry.
True. I think that many of the people in the crowd that were laughing believe the "witch hunt" narrative that is so carefully crafted by the media outlets and political representatives they listen to. I don't think most of them think rape is funny. They think E. Jean Carroll is a fake, an operative of the democrats, a tool of the "deep state". I think some of them were laughing because they believe the trial was a "fake" performance. That's why I don't think the argument of asking the people that laughed about the rape testimony how they would feel if someone raped their daughter (as someone suggested in the comments) would influence them. Of course they would be devasted if someone raped their daughter. The right wing media, elected officials, the former President of the United States--powerful people with a lot of influence--are funneling a tidal wave of misinformation at them. Until I had friends that were mislead by religious zealots and cults leaders, I didn't realize how easy it was to influence, or out right brainwash, people (and this was in the days before the fire hose of on-line media existed). When my own older brother proclaimed that 9-11 was an "inside job" that it wasn't a commercial airliner that crashed into Tower 1, that it was a military aircraft, I was shocked. He is the smart one in the family, a graduate of the University of Chicago, a decent, sensitive, kind man. I love my brother, but . . . WTF??
Sorry about the family rift. Happens all too often. However, there were millions of "smart, college-educated" Germans who believed Goebbels dis-information. He did it for political power. Our dis-information industry does it for money. Having a college degree doesn't mean that you magically got critical thinking skills or media literacy in the process.
Agree. I don't think having or not having a college degree is pertinent in this instance. My question is how do we defund disinformation?
That's very question I've been asking very smart people, including the ones who write for The Bulwark and Judd Legum. No substantive answers emerge. Mostly I've been told that the First Amendment would preclude any muzzling of the dis-information industry. Frankly, I don't believe that the First Amendment was meant as a suicide poison pill cleverly hidden in the Constitution.
Loved this: "the First Amendment was meant as a suicide poison pill cleverly hidden in the Constitution." Hysterical! But no, I don't believe it either. So what's left, lawsuits?
I may have said it before, but it's like we are back in high school, the cool bad boy has taken over the room while arguing with the teacher, and there is no principle's office.
Some of us want to see if he can make the teacher cry. The whole thing is memorable, and entertaining, and certainly better than the teacher moving the class on from the rebel's behavior.
This MAGA brand is stick it to so-called authority, without a worry for tomorrow
Except he is not the cool bad guy. He is the factory owner who employs most of the town's son's parents who no one will touch or his father will fire their parents.
What Trump offers and what America yearns to buy is simple.
You are going always to be pushed down, cheated, tricked, robbed, lied to, and taken as the chumps and marks you are, but in exchange for your acquiescence in what we are doing to you, we are restoring to you a set of victims which you yourselves can treat vilely, upon whom you can inflict pain and suffering, and on whom you can cast your fears and your anger.
The elites took that away from you, with their rules about what jokes you could tell, and what N words you were allowed to use, and which people you had to allow a place in line and a seat on the bus. They changed the rules, and that took away the only means you had of not being at the very bottom of everything. It wasn't really dignity, but it was better than the indignity others had, and you used to be allowed to force the others to swallow it, just the way we forced you to swallow it. The elites took that away, making you and them both all -- well, N-worders. They took away the only thing that made your miserable subordination endurable -- the privilege of making the N-worders' subordination even less endurable.
And worst of all, they even took away your right to use the N word. And your right to lie to yourself about not being a despicable person.
We are still going to step all over you, we are still going to fleece you to the point of flensing off your very flesh, but we are going to give you back the one thing you had. We will give you back the lie you want to tell about yourself. We will give you back your hate and your fear. We give you back the privilege of being, in your own small way, vile.
The funny thing is Trump is the super elite trust fund baby monster who expects the peasants to die for him. I bet if you asked one of the female supporters how they would feel if he sexually abused her daughter, she would say, honored. I bet he has followers who'd offer him their young girls because they have no real moral compasses whatsoever.
Donald Trump is the Alpha American Nepo Baby.
In two words: cult leader. Reminds me too much of Jim Jones.
Yes! You are 100% right.
Wish they’d hurry up and go to Guyana. Not that I wish bad for the people of Guyana.
Yep Spot on.
Thank you for getting straight to the root of the matter. Much appreciated.
It is not just the N-word, it is the W-word. Women. I truly fear for this country.
You said it, Lady.
MAGA has achieved complete equality of the sexes. Both MAGA women and MAGA men slut shame, laugh about rape, and admire stars who assault women. At least, I conclude that from the audience at the CNN-Trump Circus.
Good description of what Trump offers: victimhood. This is right from the Putin playbook. I believe that Americans, for the most part, have no idea how bad acquiescing to a strongman is.
Agree and it was also Hitler's method. Their ecomony was terrible and Hitler promised jobs. We know how that worked out.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
Lyndon B. Johnson
Thanks. A real gem.
It's the way the white elite kept the lid on in the one-party autonomous region of the former Confederacy from reconstruction until it (briefly) broke up about 1960... and it is back, but this time it will be National. It works because it focuses on the part of human nature arising out of the basest of the base heirachy of needs.
No, Maslow may have focused on the sunny side of his hierarchy of needs, but he was fully aware of what happens when the base needs of his pyramid weren't met.
Nowadays, given the opportunity, many who proclaim themselves Christian will jump at the opportunity to throw to the lions whoever they despise.
I have always believed that Religion = Hypocrisy. The last 8 years have proved that.
Cheap grace. They are so stuck in their view of where they are in the upcoming rapture that they forgot the whole part where he'll tell a lot of people "I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers."
Cf. Romans 12: 9-21
The basest base of us laughs, chortles. This is who we have become. The rot is infecting the ailing body and democracy is dying a painful death.
"Increasingly, Chris Licht is to CNN what Elon Musk is to Twitter." Turn the channel or better yet turn the TV off and read On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder.
The only way to get viewers to TV news shows is to cater to the old shut ins and small town alcoholics and druggies.
+1 for the Timothy Snyder recommendation.
Well stated. I feel sick to think we have to relive yet another Trump candidacy, as we collectively try to claw out way out of that nightmare. Groundhog Day, over and over.
The whole system is definitely broken, that we are stuck in this horror show.
His platform is simple: I hate the same people and institutions that you hate. And you should hate whoever and whatever I tell you to. Elect me to achieve our communal revenge on all of them.
Trump (and his media avatar, Tucker) were both never accepted by polite society, despite being born with silver spoons in their mouths. And their hurt, anger, and embarrassment over that rejection has led to unimaginable calamities.
I disagree. You are saying they are victims. They are not victims. That is what part of their grift is.
Everybody is a victim. It’s just that in the cases of Donald and Tucker, they are both such examples of walking and talking piles of human excrement that it’s hard to care.
Their decades long public hissy fits reveal their complete lack of character, and how failed they are as human beings.
Yes to all of this, especially “And you should hate whoever and whatever I tell you to.”