This post began as a comment on shaun’s post What Happens When You Use Bigotry & Hate As Weapons.
I put it online there and then decided it should be a standalone post of its own. So…here it is.
Read it and weep.
Shaun wrote (regarding Donald Trump):
…what goes up must come down in the cruel physics of politics.
Yes indeed.
But the question remains…when?
He can pump his own balloon with his own money, and every attack on him by mainstream media just makes him more popular with his base. The mainstream media have shucked and jived so shamelessly for so long that they are now a negative factor. Upside down and backwards. Inverse and retrograde. Trump understands this and he is using it with great skill. Unless some investigative reporter comes up with a truly damning piece of information about him…serious personal information…his balloon is just going to keep going.
Up, up and away.
Watch.
Trump’s beyond-the-pale attack on McCain in declaring “he’s not a war hero” for being captured during the Vietnam War, never mind that he was held prisoner for five and a half years in Hanoi and refused early release despite being repeatedly beaten, quickly became the excuse the other candidates were praying for (the execrable Cruz excepted) to lock, load and lash back, and the news media needed to stop acting like it was intimidated by Trump and begin piling on. Or at least do some serious vetting.
Actually, it’s not “beyond the pale” politically. He picked the perfect victim. All the hoo hah that followed just made him stronger. Again, media (and politician) inverse retrograde results. A huge segment of the population is now anti-politician and anti-media. Too much mediocrity topped by too much failure and too much greed. People have had enough.
It’s not like Trump’s popularity is coming from any kind of intelligent majority. People with any brains at all have been anti-politician and anti-media for decades. It’s just that people are fed up with the tissue of lies we laughingly call a culture and he convinces them that he is telling…yelling, really…the truth.
He also wrote:
Predictably, one of the first post-McCain slander reports concerned Trump being evasive and seemingly embarrassed about why he never served in the military at the height of the war McCain volunteered for despite having a medical deferment he has described as being only “short term.” Next up were stories that he is a closet liberal who has donated more of his fortune to Democrats than Republicans, including Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. He also has supported universal health care and was pro-choice until recently. And then came stories about his seat-of-the-pants operation: That he’s a less than serious candidate who brags he only spends about half his time campaigning, hasn’t bothered to assemble much of a staff, one of whom is a former The Apprentice contestant, and doesn’t take advice from anyone who isn’t The Donald.
His is not an issue-driven popularity, shaun. The only thing In that paragraph that is going to register for potential Trump voters is the last idea…that he doesn’t rely on the usual coterie of DeeCeeLand hangers-on, that he makes up his own mind.
According to a corollary law of political physics, Trump’s poll numbers should begin dropping now that it’s open season on him. We shall see.
Yes we shall. If instead of dropping they begin to skyrocket? We are in big trouble. Bet on that as well. I predict that the major polling organizations…PermaGov satraps, all…will start trying to skew the numbers down if at all possible, but they can only ride that trick pony so far and it’s the only trick they know. What if he just ignores them and continues to make news. Big rallies, sensationalistic pronouncements, etc. The only real weapon that could be used against him would be if the media ignored him, and since he’s a cash cow for those media that’s not likely to happen. Money before honor, after all. It’s the Omertican way.
Gonna be an interesting summer and fall, that’s for sure.
Watch.
We may be witnessing the newest phase of Omertican politics.
The Reality Show Party.
Reality Show 101.
They asked for it, the media did, and they got it.
Watch.
As a campaigner, he has the Midas touch.
They love him!!!
I am feeling a very deep fear here. I can see a serious accident coming and I have no way to control the car.
The reaction to the last 25 years of PermaGov fix is upon us and its name is Trump.
Watch
AG
WE asked for it; we got it.
Trumpola!!!
AG
Is he running as a Republican … or as an Independent? Either way he spells heaps of trouble for the establishment. He is in it for the long run … he’s puffing up his ego as an exemplary narcist. In need of campaign funds? He’ll sell some assets. He has a lean political organization … himself … speechwriters? … teleprompter? … hell no! Republican party with candidate John McCain was a loser … choice for Alaskan dame Palin … her wit about Russia and foreign policy … McCain’s bombing mission was interupted as he was shot down … Vietnam war … genocide … a hero? … how many fighter planes did he crash … his daddy saved his ass.
Trump is a WYSIWYG candidate … same mannerism as Pim Fortuyn (assassinated) and Geert Wilders. There is no in between, you either hate him or love him. These candidates cannot be labeled or polled because they reach out to the people who have never voted before! The voters come from a broad range of people, from the well educated to the guy on the street who has more than one job to survive and no time to delve into politics. Trump is the perfect candidate ot American Instamatic or Polaroid culture … ready to serve and eat. No fancy analysis … just a teflon coating, nothing sticks to him.
The United States is called a democracy … in Europe we know better … just as Israel is a democracy … NOT … the U.S. is a failed enterprise when one considers International Law … wars of aggression … crimes and torture in Central and South America … and elsewhere … Hanoi bombing… Agent Orange … coup d’etat of 1953 Teheran … Iraq-Iran War support for Saddam Hussein … chemical warfare … Abu Ghraib … torture and rendition … Bagram in Kabul … fear for ICC – International Criminal Court in The Hague … befriended Gaddafi before eliminating dictator … oil exploration and contracts … Seven Sisters… Middle East and Gulf States … human rights and religious freedom … gay rights in Muslim countries that are our allies … ISIS beheadings.
On his visit to ally and friend Netanyahu … Pentagon boss Ashton Carter states Israel is our cornerstone to Middle East policy … doesn’t promise hope for the near future … occupation – settlements – crimes against humanity … under the radar: great ally Hissène Habrë from Chad is now on trial in Senegal for genocide .. 40,000 deaths in the 1980s as friend USA, Reagan and CIA were funding and watching … blowback for abhorrent US foreign policy … justice for corporations only … not people.
○ Meet Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s Jewish Wingman
The Donald will pry open the can of repugnant worms and the USA-ians will—well I don’t know—either gobble them up like they do everything else or say ugh to the smell. Let’s hope they experience flaming right-wing catharsis one way or the other—or vomit.
See if he maxes out at 38% or less.
One of the few times that a two-party system might be an advantage unless there is an electoral college stalemate. (That’s a worst case scenario.)
Trump might just be destroying marketing-based big-money campaigning. That will threaten media revenues. They will explode the Zeppelin before January; that’s why they are pumping him up now. Will they get him to spend lots of money on an independent campaign?
The candidate that has a new model of political discourse that actually makes a connection with policy in terms the people can understand and avoids large media expenditures might unhinge this pure marketing creation show he and his big bucks capture the GOP nomination (which I think unlikely because of the agenda of the permagov.) It’s the GOP guardians’ turn to police their own and draft a candidate after disintegrating the clown car. But they will have to rein in Adelman, Koch, Friess, and the other big spenders. Bet Grover, Karl, and Newt are having some interesting conversations with their networks about the base not wanting another Bush. Kasich has the illusion that it is himself.
As for Midas touch, a guy who has a casino go bankrupt depends on something other than a Midas touch; generally that looks like some form of gubmint money.
You write:
Well…nobody really in the know believes that the whole “casino” business is clean of mob money. Those guys simply do not sell out. They retreat back into the shadows and take a smaller cut, using front men like Mr. Trump, Steve Wynn and even Sheldon Adelson as shields. i have oersonally seen this time and time again in the NYC jazz and latin music businesses. Smaller scale, same game. However, when you get down to the bottom of the barrel there those guys are, looking up at you with an offer you can’t refuse.
The question remains…how much of that power is in a sense “gubmint money?” How deep is the interface between spook areas like the CIA and the old-line/newer-line so-called “mobsters?”
Inquiring minds may want to know, but do they want to know enough to die for? As Donald Trump would undoubtedly say if asked under the influence of sodium pentathol or one of the newer “truth serums”…”Naaaah. Bad negotiantion tactic.”
Riiiight…
How about Trump? Nixon/Rebozo was mobbed up. The whole anti-Castro/CIA/Bay of Pigs fuckup was mobbed up. The JFK murder was way mobbed up. Bush I was part of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. No one can tell me that the Oliver North/CIA/cocaine for guns thing didn’t have a domestic mob OK. Trump has no “advisors?” Who exactly is whispering in Trump’s ear when he bellies up to the bar for a quick one? Eh?
My take on it, anyway.
Later…
AG