“These are people that complain about crime but paraded one criminal
after another on to the stage in Milwaukee. It’s a party that talks about
freedom but traffics in the language of Hitler and blood purity. This was an eye-numbing assault on American
values and American decency.” Jennifer Rubin on ‘Last Word’
Friday
"Folks care about looks, stride, and ATTITUDE! Trump understands that. At the RNC convention, he surrounded himself with glitter and big things that captured/shared attention and affected emotions. Even a big bandage. It was reality TV. He shares his space with big things and it works."- Male attendee at RNC
The white women drooling, tossing kisses and crying at the GOP convention reminded me of the women who also adulated People's Temple cult leader Jim Jones. (Especially in the new documentary 'The Women of the People's Temple') In that documentary too, one beheld troves of women - mainly white- mesmerized by Jim Jones' spiel to the extent they even helped him to prepare the cyanide-laced, purple Kool aid concoction that killed over 900 at Jonestown Guyana in November, 1978.
But then Jim Jones commanded only a minimal cult of about a thousand, not a teeming mass of millions who salivate over every word as they watch him on TV or on social media. Also, Jones had only limited power, primarily over his own deluded, immediate flock. It wasn't like he had an entire political party by the balls like Trump has - such that he could steer it any way he wanted- and turn previous harsh critics (like J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley and Lindsey Graham) into pathetic boot lickers. Including mesmerizing such a large faction of the electorate as to threaten our nation's democracy with his lies, sedition.
The primary commonality is that both Jones and Trump have been deified, turned into demigods. Trump, after having exploited last Saturday's failed assassination attempt and turned it into a case of "divine intervention". Which his clueless MAGA zombies have been happy to regurgitate and reinforce - including with dozens of for sale images of Trump protected by angels, by Jesus, or in benedictory pose,
All of which was skewered to smithereens by Bill Maher in his New Rules segment in Friday's Real Time, dealing with the MAGAs 'magical thinking':
New Rule: MAGA's Magical Thinking | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) (youtube.com)
Noting whenever a leader played the deific or demigod card, from Julius Caesar to Hirohito, it never ended well for that nation.
Anyway, Australian author Cameron Reilly has a rudimentary theory of the case in his book The Psychopath Epidemic, and is kind of complementary to the recent 'Big Read' piece in The Weekend Financial Times ('What Makes Trump So Irresistible?) In author Reilly's book (pp 242-43) Trump's trick is the mastery of BSOs or 'Bright Shiny Objects' which in Reilly's words (p. 242):
"Trump perfected the art of creating a new BSO every day (in the 2016 campaign) and sometimes several per day, forcing the media and the rest of the candidates to respond to him, focus on him and pay attention to him. Despite the general consensus that the general public would soon tire of his shenanigans the BSO tactic worked His technique of making outrageous statements from the podium kept the entire political circus on their toes, constantly predicting his imminent political demise, while devoting so much attention to him that it scarcely left room for anything else. He devoured media minutes like Godzilla attacking Tokyo. He played on our BSO susceptibility."
Jim Jones did this up to a point, i.e. using his bogus faith healing tricks (while still in California) and 'white nights' (mock suicide rehearsals in Jonestown) but he can't hold a candle to Trump. Who, in his latest 'BSO event' crassly exploited his actual attempted assassination to get the convention crowd riveted for the first 20 minutes of his nomination acceptance speech. Before going off the rails and screeching about all his perceived grievances and enemies and how he'd deal with them in the final 60 minutes. Indeed, Chris Hayes showed enough of this flatulence in his ALL In show the following night,
Chris Hayes reads ‘deranged’ transcript of Trump RNC speech: 'Obviously in decline' (msnbc.com)
Noting the extent of Trump's derangement, reverting to attacks on everyone and everything he detests, i.e. "weaponizing" the Justice department, lying about the Democratic Party, the "China virus", the migrant invasion etc. Guest Mehti Hasson, in the same segment, emphasized how Trump has degraded a portion of the country's brains with the help of the media's dereliction. As he told Hayes (who himself acknowledged there is now a kind of acclimation to Trump's nutso ways):
"Right, since Trump is 'dog bites man' on a grand scale. He's so immunized us to his craziness and derangement that we always kind of move on....The New York Times, the paper of record, said that Trump veered into familiar partisan attacks. But journalists don't like familiar. They want new, and shiny, and Trump's insanity, bigotry and dishonest is all very familiar, so we just normalize it. We normalize the abnormal. We've mainstreamed his extremism. That is a fundamental problem because then you end up gaslighting your readers and your viewers into pretending the speech was somehow normal"
Adding:
"I interviewed a member of the Washington Post editorial board and when I said it was a crazy, insane speech, he said 'Well it was just normal Trump. But that's the problem. Normal Trump is crazy, is insane and we need to keep saying that. But we don't."
We don't indeed. We mostly suffer mass selective amnesia and try to sweep it into the nearest memory holes. Then we bawl and wonder why oh why when the shit hits the fan in the aftermath.
Back to The Financial Times piece: What makes a convicted felon, election denier, philanderer, Capitol riot agitator, self-proclaimed “day one” dictator and provocateur so irresistible? Especially to American white women. The FT discussed the question under five categories:
1. Grit
2. Spectacle
3. Nostalgia
4. Faith
5. Economics
In their exploration of (1) - which really ought to have gone under the header of 'MAGA Machismo', the FT first buttonholed a tattooed NJ guy, so taken by the image of Trump standing up after being struck in the ear by a wannabe assassin's bullet - with fist pumping- he blurted:
“That’s a man’s man! You can’t fake that!”
Oh really? Then why did he find it necessary to get his daddy to get him out of the draft by using bone spurs 6 decades ago? Which is why we now call him "Captain Bonespurs". If he was truly a "man's man" why not take the actual draft physical like I did in March 1965? As opposed to getting a special ticket exception compliments of daddy.
Then the FT went to Lisa Gasper, a Philadelphia realtor. She was asked by the FT about Trump’s ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ remark, and wasn’t phased at all.
According to her: “Boys will be boys, that’s how they all talk”
Oh yeah? If my brothers and I had talked that way we’d have had our butts handed to us. By the Sisters of Mercy who taught us in Catholic school, if not our parents.
Another MAGA Ape was almost literally groveling before Hulk Hogan. This was during the most garish spectacle of Hulkamania ever to arrive in Milwaukee. "Hulk" (Terry G. Bollea,) then took the stage in character to praise “my hero, that gladiator,” working himself into a rage over the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life and ripping open his shirt to expose a “TRUMP-VANCE” tank top. The testosterone was indeed flowing by now and the women (see above) were being affected, even as other Trump rump suckers chimed in.
"This is what male identity politics looks like" according to Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News propagandist, best remembered for his February interview with Vlad Putin - interviewing the Russian autocrat as if he was a pop star. Carlson has since embraced the alt-right angst over testosterone levels . Maybe not aware that too high a level at middle age (Carlson is 55) can lead to prostrate cancer.
Carlson like the other yahoos spoke off the cuff, suggesting that the shooting established Trump as a "leader on a biological level". Boasting:Of course not. Since those women have too much sense and intelligence to attend a "white trash party" (in the words of comedian Larry Wilmore on Real Time) and be lured in by ape-like macho displays more peculiar to Mandrills. So one can easily surmise those white women gushing in the top pic are not in that category, but rather trailer trash gussied up to suit the scene. They also likely don't care any more about getting their pussies grabbed - by any of those performing MAGA apes - than having them grabbed by a Mandrill.
The Spectacle aspect in the FT piece focused on the bright shiny objects that have always been a staple of Trump's shtick and standard for many psychopaths - as author Reilly notes. At the top of the list are Trump's spontaneous outbursts riffing on his opponents and his biggest lies. As one female RNC goer put it:
"Trump rallies give you a feeling of being special and part of something bigger than yourself), Trump opens with humor, can be devilishly funny even when mocking Biden’s stutter or riffing on score settling anecdotes."
Ah yes, 'devilishly funny' like he was in the 2016 campaign when he mocked a handicapped NY Times reporter;
One was certainly left to wonder what "omnipresence" allowed him to be seen this way — wounded, vulnerable, mortal - only to transition to an entitled, arrogant, power mad misfit. But seriously, the political world might well have been talking about a "new" unifying Donald Trump now (as a Dallas Morning News headline initially advertised) had the speech ended there.
It did not. So even the next day's Wall Street Journal editorial (p. 14A) could see how Trump plausibly lost millions of votes that otherwise might have been his had he stayed with the somber script of his acknowledged mortality and backed away from petty grievance ("promising not to prosecute Biden or his family") while not rambling about his love of dictators (spending more minutes praising the bloodthirsty North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.) All of this, as the Journal noted, reminding normal voters of his autocrat-worshipping tendencies in his previous term.
But even that wasn't enough as the Journal editors raked this graceless mutt over the coals again in an editorial today (p. A16), writing - in regard to Trump's response to Biden passing the torch to Kamala Harris:
"It should have been an opportunity to show some class and judgment by welcoming the decision, warning adversaries not to take advantage of Mr. Biden's last few months in office....short and presidential, a unifying tone.
Not Donald Trump. On Truth Social on Sunday after the announcement, he posted: 'Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for president and certainly not fit to serve."
Failing to note Trump is a classless, graceless roach. Biden not fit to run for president? The WSJ editors should have told the fool to look in the mirror at the actual culprit for whom that pig tail fits. A cockroach who would never give up power and ego for the good of his country as Joe Biden did yesterday.
As for the Nostalgia dimension, one knew before even reading the FT piece it centered on a return to the 'head of the table days for the victimized, grievance-filled whites who worship the orange one. As the FT columnist put it:
“Trump promises whites a return to cultural dominance which is threatened by their shrinking numbers”
The "Faith" dimension of course, is just as fake as the 'Grit'- Machismo one. The Evangelical hypocrites who worship the ground Trump walks on, and who are now set to elevate him to Christ level, don't give a crap how many pussies he grabs or porn stars he fucks. Just as Jim Jones' female worshippers at Jonestown didn't care how many People's Temple women he had sex with - even those with husbands.
As one 20 year old self- proclaimed Evangelical female put it at the RNC:
“Trump may be a sinner, but his positions represent
my religious values. All I need to see
is a speck of my faith represented!”
Well, how about a speck of brain power, girl?
As for the economics angle, one heard the usual recitation of woes: The rising housing as in Arizona, and rising auto loan delinquencies as well as grocery costs too high to manage. But even some of those interviewed admitted they had refused to budget in the face of supply side problems, had been reckless taking out car loans or had not planned before moving to a new location. (As one couple admitted, moving from Tennessee to Arizona but not scoping out the housing costs first.)
All in all, the RNC was perhaps the biggest GOP fiasco since bomb thrower bigot Pat Buchanan was featured as a keynote speaker in the 1992 convention. With a circus like this, especially the way the women attending were gaslit and exploited, it ought to be a turkey shoot for Kamala Harris' campaign to take down the Trumpers.
As for the MAGA cult's hysterical reactions, claiming the Dems 'switching horses' and Biden's bowing out is "undemocratic", I suggest these dimwits pay attention to CBS political analyst John Dickerson's words this morning:
"If the Democratic Party decides this is how they want to pick their nominee they get to choose. And do Republicans really want to have a big discussion about thwarting the will of the people? Because as you have as many clips as exist, of top Republicans after January 6th - that Donald Trump was the inspiration for trying to disenfranchise 81 million people- I don't think that's turf on which Republicans want to spend a lot of time."
See Also:
by Amanda Marcotte | July 21, 2024 - 6:00am | permalink
MILWAUKEE — On the third night of the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump's WWE-inspired entrance came complete with a trollish musical cue, James Brown's infamous ode to traditional gender hierarchies, "It's A Man's Man's Man's World."
Earlier that day, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., learned the song's lesson the hard way. The once-soaring MAGA star was facing down a painfully small crowd at the signing of her book "MTG." Just before the trollish congresswoman was scheduled to arrive, a group of red-clad workers busied themselves with building big stacks of Greene's hardcover, published in November 2023. But only a few American flag-festooned folks had lined up. An hour later, Greene still hadn't arrived, but the crowd hadn't gotten much bigger, with fewer than 20 people waiting. When she finally rolled in at 3 PM, Greene took one look at the underwhelming crowd, muttered something to her entourage and then quickly hid in a nearby room....
After four days at the RNC, I suspect a major source of her woes was something darker. The GOP, already the party of sexism, is getting more gratuitous with its toxic masculinity. Everywhere one looked at the convention, Republicans were exalting maleness with an ardor that reads as "defensive" to outsiders but appears to be a convincing display to those inside the MAGA cult. The overcompensation led to a grand finale featuring both pro wrestler Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White, rather than the traditional activists and politicians one hears at a convention. Hogan declared Trump a "gladiator," which should be funny applied to a doughy senior citizen caked in make-up, but appears to have been taken at face value by the RNC crowd. Along with the James Brown song, Trump used "Macho Man" by the Village People as intro music, still indifferent to the irony of the song.
The boys club vibe spread throughout the convention. Women were welcome, but only as support staff.
And:
by Will Bunch | July 19, 2024 - 6:36am | permalink
— from the Philadelphia Inquirer
I came to the American Heartland to cover a political convention, but all I found was a tent revival, Brother Trump’s Traveling Salvation Show.
The Republican National Convention took just minutes after Monday’s opening gavel to officially nominate its Dear Leader for the third and probably not the last time. The roll call, once the highlight of past conventions, is now an empty ritual. A party platform that was probably written on a Mar-a-Lago cocktail napkin was rammed though with no dissent. RNC schedulers quickly liberated all four nights for the only real purpose they had here in Wisconsin.
The deification of Donald J. Trump.
And:
by Robert Becker | July 21, 2024 - 5:31am | permalink
Fast path to a criminal government: elect an unrepentant felon who then rounds up cohorts out for blood
Few find outlandish, self-centered outlaws morally admirable, let alone models of heroic leadership. Yes, principled protesters can choose to break the law, like Thoreau defying war taxes, or Gandhi against the British Empire. Or Martin Luther King committed to civil and human rights. But they acted not from self-serving motivation, nor material gains,invoking higher principles of the very best angels of human nature. “Convicted yet heroic,” opposite to Trump, they exposed oppression, unjust laws and inhumane conditions.
99% of the time, serious criminals are either psychologically/genetically maimed, (compensating by busting the rules), self-serving (however dim, misguided, addicted to crisis), or models of self-induced demolition (and the notoriety of being caught).
And:
Preacher, prophet, messiah: Trump cult takes on religious overtones at RNC
And:
Usually, the quadrennial nominating conventions are opportunities for both major political parties to unite their base around their respective nominee ahead of the general election. But former President Donald Trump's speech at the Republican National Convention has one former Republican sounding the alarm about what he believes are significant cognitive issues plaguing the ex-president.
In his latest essay for the Atlantic, U.S. Naval War College professor emeritus Tom Nichols — who was a Republican until 2016 — voiced his concerns about the mental fortitude of the 45th president of the United States. He opined that Trump's rambling, 93-minute speech on Thursday night demonstrated what he believes is evidence of rapid, ongoing mental decline.
"[T]he Republican National Convention was a searing reminder that Trump is a vengeful autocrat with obvious mental deficits who has surrounded himself with a crew of vicious goons," Nichols wrote.
And:
Last month, the Supreme Court effectively declared Donald Trump would be king if he were reelected. Now the GOP is taking the next step: In the wake of this past Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump, the party is all but claiming he has a divine right to the position.
“I told [Trump] that last night. I said, ‘Sir, the hand of God is on you,’” Florida Rep. Byron Donalds said at a Milwaukee town hall on Tuesday.
“Trump came very close to having his brains spread over that platform but God, I believe, protected him,” Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of famous pastor Billy Graham, said during a speech at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night. “Maybe that’s one reason God saved his life,” Graham added. “I hope Trump understands that it’s not about him making America great again, it’s God making America great again.”
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