Don's not really a chump, but definitely dangerous if he goes too far as president

[FrankGSterleJr]

Americans aren't even trying to understand each other anymore
Donald Trump's could banish the Washington Post without thinking twice because the majority of the paper's readers mean nothing to him

In Louisiana, where temperatures hug the low-30s and 80 per cent humidity regularly thickens the air, it’s apparently not enough to be on death row.
State officials there have spent $1 million fighting a court order to install air conditioning (more than the cost of said air conditioning), by arguing prisoners can make do with cold showers.
No air conditioning. In Louisiana. On death row. It’s a bad joke, except it’s actually a headline. And that is the case so often in America these days.
When Donald Trump — waving his golden scepter and adjusting the TRUMP crown on his head — pulled press credentials from the entire Washington Post this week, it was a move without precedent that should signal to Trump’s followers just how little he cares about freedom.
In this case, of the press. Trump banned the “phony and dishonest” Post after it ran a story about Trump’s conspiracy-theory suggestion that President Barack Obama may be somehow involved with the Orlando shooting.
That statement, too, should signal to Trump’s followers all the sunbathing has finally given Trump perpetual sun-stroke, to the point that he sees Daesh sympathy in a man condemned internationally for going too far (in particular with drone strikes) to kill terrorists.
But then we have to ask: What are Trump supporters actually thinking about all this? And what we’ve learned in the last year is, they’re not really thinking at all. They just love Trump, whatever he says.
And the crazier it gets, well, the crazier it gets.
It’s brand power the Queen would envy. And it suggests a definable, if also unknowable, group who can’t be reached by reason or reportage.
How big that group is, we may never know. But it was big enough to earn him the Republican nomination.
More generally, the attacks in Orlando have revealed not just deep, but perhaps insurmountable ideological differences among Americans.
While Hillary Clinton hammers home the need for gun control, and comedian Samantha Bee slams Florida’s governor for his inaction, Trump doubled down on the need for more guns (apparently so Americans can battle it out against terrorists in the streets), a tactic The New York Times warns could actually secure him some needed votes from less educated white Democrats. That Trump stands to actually gain more support, after all we’ve seen, genuinely baffles me.
But Americans undoubtedly know better. The concept of a national conversation was lost somewhere along the way to the reality of a national stalemate. And that is fairly terrifying. In this era of intractable difference, are there any minds still open to change? And what does that say for the shared experiment that is America?
I consider it a human duty to be able to relate to others, or at least to try. And I’m failing because I can’t understand a person so “tough on crime” they can’t even install air conditioning for a few dead-men-walking, or someone so afraid of controls on guns they’d rather live amid routine mass shootings via assault rifles. And perhaps that confusion is also a Canadian thing.
In the American era of Trump, of mass shootings, of bans on Muslims and attacks on abortions and a national uproar over trans people using bathrooms, I’ve never been faced with so much evidence that we are not at all the same. America feels, more than ever, deeply unknowable, deeply foreign, and deeply stuck.

Metro newspaper, Canada, Wed Jun 15 2016

___________________________________________________


“While Hillary Clinton hammers home the need for gun control, and comedian Samantha Bee slams Florida’s governor for his inaction, Trump doubled down on the need for more guns (apparently so Americans can battle it out against terrorists in the streets), a tactic the New York Times warns could actually secure him some needed votes from less educated white Democrats. That Trump stands to actually gain more support, after all we’ve seen, genuinely baffles me.”

Donald Trump (with the help of countless Americans who’ll unconditionally do their best to empower him) is why it may be, for the first time ever, somewhat comforting for many people around the world to know that not only ‘one side’ (i.e. the U.S.) of the global ideological/political/foreign-relations spectrum is sufficiently armed with ICBMs.

____________________


“But then we have to ask: What are Trump supporters actually thinking about all this? And what we’ve learned in the last year is, they’re not really thinking at all. They just love Trump, whatever he says. And the crazier it gets, well, the crazier it gets.
It’s brand power the Queen would envy. And it suggests a definable, if also unknowable, group who can’t be reached by reason or reportage. How big that group is, we may never know. But it was big enough to earn him the Republican nomination.”


Perhaps he entrances his numerous supporters-to-the-end by way of his alternating finger-tip connecting, mostly, if not entirely, with his thumb and forefinger, then changing to his thumb and index finger; and, of course, his I’m-just-an-O.K.-average-Joe baseball-cap-wearing guy -- somewhat like former Canadian Ernst Zundel used to frequently wear and behave in public.

[yiostheoy]

This rant is too long. And every sentence in it is pure crap.

Trump is probably going to lose in November but not because of anything in this rant.

[Skip]

We have the temperature of political rhetoric and a stunningly clear picture of the end-point of mass advertising.

And it suggests a definable, if also unknowable, group who can’t be reached by reason or reportage.

No, not anymore. The journalists and educators might have tried to reach them, teach them, but .... hey, there was no money in it!
That fat freckled index finger could be on the nuclear button in a few months and wipe all life off this mudball forever... because Americans had a big co-ordinated infantile temper-tantrum.

[henry quirk]

"Americans (have) a big co-ordinated (on-going) infantile temper-tantrum"

Several, actually.

We got dumbasses who support Sanders, the big friggin' commie...they bought into the peace and love and free stuff for all crap...never mind that communism (or 'socialism') ranks right up there with child rape as one of the worst things to make its way out of a man's head.

We got dumbasss who support Clinton, the mercenary parasite...they want the status quo preserved, the boat un-rocked, the waters still...they pine for the quiet of the grave.

We got dumbasses who support Trump...tired of ideological purists who never follow through, they're goin' with the one they think can inject a little common sense into the machine of government, despite his outlandishness, his rawness...what makes 'em dumbasses is not their bent for practicality, but cuz they think some one else can do it for them...they're dumbasses cuz they're still lookin' for a 'leader'.

We got dumbassses who support Johnson...they're perhaps the biggest dumbasses of all cuz they crow about 'liberty' but still wanna be led.

We got dumbasses (like me) who ask every four years 'is this the best we can do?' and, cuz they can't sanction installin' the 'lesser' of two (they just wanna hire some good employees) vote 'none of the above' and then get on with the day to day knowing none of this horse shit matters anyway.

[Skip]

Are you aware of how the current state of electoral politics got this way? I mean the actual mechanics.

[henry quirk]

Simply (cuz I just don't have the time for anything else): employees (elected folk) elevated themselves to 'leaders', and employers (citizens) let them get away with it, bought into it.

[Arising_uk]

...
We got dumbasses who support Sanders, the big friggin' commie...they bought into the peace and love and free stuff for all crap...never mind that communism (or 'socialism') ranks right up there with child rape as one of the worst things to make its way out of a man's head. ...

No, it really doesn't.
...

We got dumbasses (like me) who ask every four years 'is this the best we can do?' and, cuz they can't sanction installin' the 'lesser' of two (they just wanna hire some good employees) vote 'none of the above' and then get on with the day to day knowing none of this horse shit matters anyway.

Nice to hear that you vote you old caveman you and that you have NOTA.

[henry quirk]

No, it really doesn't.

From where I stand, yeah, it does.


Nice to hear...you have NOTA.

We don't, not in any real or expansive way...my none of the above 'is' not voting.

[Impenitent]

nota... no one is elected...

anarchy!!!

I'd go with that...

-Imp