One of the king of gaslights' recent comments to a MAGA mob went;
"You don't give matches to an arsonist and you don't give power to an angry left wing mob."
Which, seriously, is the sort of linguistic lickspittle only a certified moron or Reeptard would swallow, but from the looks of things our nation harbors millions of them. In any case, as yesterday's Denver Post editorial pointed out, such rhetoric and demagoguery is downright dangerous as it attempts to paint the political opposition as sinister and violent enemies which - according to the same Post editorial - "is rich when you consider all the Tea Party members who brought loaded rifles to ACA rallies" i.e. some 7-8 years ago.
But hey, in the demented Dotard era of inverse reality where lies become truths, and truths lies, that's about how it rolls....downward. And the only way to put this nation back on a course of sanity will be for millions to vote to ensure at least one house of congress is D-controlled, to put a check on Dotard's most dangerous impulses.
As the Post editorial also notes, it's no secret why Trump and the GOP are resorting to this political gas lighting maneuver. Basically, they "are getting no traction" either out of their tax cuts or the Kavanaugh fiasco. In each case, the polls show a clear majority of Americans - not the Trumpites, obviously- object to the tax cuts as well as Kavanaugh's confirmation.
But that hasn't stopped a blitz of propaganda to try to get Americans to believe that instead, it is the left and Dems out to destroy the country. If you truly believe that horse manure ask yourself why Trump was in Montana at a rally whipping up a crowd of his "ghoulish followers" (in the words of WaPo columnist Jennifer Rubin) applauding Repuke slimeball Greg Gianforte who body slammed a Guardian reporter 5 months ago, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/05/gop-gangster-bum-greg-gianforte-body.html
If you're convinced that applauding body slamming of a reporter who merely asked a Reep congressional candidate a health question is about democracy - and the real thugs are on the left - there's not much I can do or write to change your mind. How to say it? You've imbibed the Dotard -GOP kool aid.
As a further clear example of inversion, it takes some colossal chutzpah to write, as WSJ hack Dan Henninger did last week ('You Cannot Be Civil') that Hillary "has aligned herself with Trump's view of the Democratic party". Say what? Henninger clarifies:
"Mr Trump has been using his rallies to denounce the 'radical Democrats' as an angry mob and on Tuesday Mrs. Clinton told CNN 'You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about."
Which is perfectly rational and true. I mean, why make nicey with guttersnipes and knavish knuckledraggers whose only accomplishment has been to insert a bestial, shit -eating mutt into the White House? A demented degenerate who insults women on his Twitter account like he lies with impunity to his masses of deplorables at his insane brown shirt rallies.
That Trump is no icon of civility ought to be obvious. The swine-in-chief has repeatedly accused women of having “fat, ugly” faces and of repelling voters because of their looks. He called one woman a “crazed, crying lowlife” and said another was a “dog” who had the “face of a pig.” He said Hillary Clinton’s bathroom break during a 2015 presidential debate was “too disgusting” to talk about. He has repeatedly mocked women for being overweight.
Omarosa Manigault Newman was described by Trump as "that dog" and a "crazed, crying lowlife".
Trump described Stephanie Clifford as “Horseface” in a tweet last Tuesday, adding her to a long list of women he has attacked by demeaning their looks, mocking their bodily functions or comparing them to animals. Trump’s verbal assault came as he gloated about a federal judge’s decision to dismiss a defamation suit filed by Ms. Clifford, who is known professionally as Stormy Daniels. Ms. Clifford’s lawyer responded by calling the president “a disgusting misogynist.”
When Trump attacks women, as he did with Ms. Clifford in his tweet last Tuesday, he often goes after their faces. As he battled his rivals for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Trump made fun of Carly Fiorina’s face on television, saying that people wouldn’t vote for the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard because of her looks.
“Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”
Well, it beats the brat face of a died blonde, mop topped, orange Orangutan!
Trump, for his part, has continued to make crude comments about women’s bodies since taking office, repeatedly testing the limits of the public’s acceptance of a president’s locker-room vocabulary. Incredibly, the WSJ's Henninger actually believes Dotard's incivility to women, his total depraved nastiness and misogyny, is somehow on a par with the women who "shrieked" during Kavanaugh's confirmation. He is totally deluded and we can aver this is false equivalence on steroids.
Deluded hack that he is, Henninger also ruminated on "exactly when the Democrats shifted the national focus from Trump and onto their own behavior."
"Their own behavior"? As if on any remote par with Trump's and the GOP's? You need a better class of anti-hallucinatory med, chief!
Henninger, like a dog worrying a used up bone, asserts this occurred with the Kavanaugh confirmation farce, failing to appreciate that the "shrieking from the gallery" he associates with incivility and the "mob" was actually the anguished collective cry of women (many assault victims themselves) scorned by the assembled GOP, Judiciary Committee Senators. I refer here to the likes of Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch and others. They insulted not only Christine Blasey Ford but all female victims of sexual assault, diminishing their experiences and attacking them as victims for coming forward.
It was clear Christine Ford didn't trust the bullies and buffoons of the Senate GOP to do any proper investigation, and by the end of the two months that was obvious. Hell, the pair of elderly GOP Senate Judiciary Bozos - Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch- didn't even pick up on Kavanaugh's assorted lies. (I suspect they willfully ignored them.) Hatch himself had the noxious gall to claim Dr. Ford was "mixed up".
What Henninger attributes to incivility then, was actually a fervent cry for justice in the face of a confirmation farce perpetrated by a clique of entitled white male assholes. That Henninger doesn't recognize this indicates he is one himself, and has a vested interest in abetting this narrative. Well, hell, of course they all do, given they've gotten no traction on their illustrious tax cuts - which now 61 percent recognize as no good for the country. As one retired AF vet wrote in a recent letter to the CS Indy:
"Corporations and their wealthy CEOs have been rewarded with these tax breaks while we work paycheck to paycheck, our health care gets gutted, our retirements are threatened, and our workplaces made less safe."
That is a citizen who has his head screwed on straight.
Henninger also fumbles badly insisting the rage shown wasn't real but "mostly a practiced act". He also conspiratorially ties it to the "San Francisco Democrats which stand for the party of the unelectable Left". Well, he will see just how "unelectable" the Dems are next month, namely on November 6th - when all the women insulted by the Repukes' brash behavior cast their ballots.
Be civil? This is laughable for anyone - especially an unapologetic PR scribe like Henninger - to demand of the left or Dems when the latter are the sole bulwark against Trumpism and chaos - undermining and defiling all democratic norms. Even worse, normalizing this degenerate behavior at the expense of an outrage-benumbed populace which finds it ever more difficult to keep up even with daily news, far less Trump's litany of transgressions.
And yet to read Lance Morrow's WSJ claptrap ('We've Grown Accustomed To Trump', p. A19, today) is to wring one's hands in despair that we've already crossed that Rubicon. He claims for example:
"Trump's peculiarities don't seem unusual when compared with the extreme bizarreness, not to mention pathology, on the Left".
Adding, as if in mindless afterthought:
"People can get used to the strangest things, once the novelty has passed."
Seriously, you brainless nincompoop? So an unhinged, rabid mutt that cages infants, praises thugs who body slam reporters, and adulates a retrograde, Mideast oil kingdom that chops up journalists is not unusual and vermin to be ostracized.? Merely something "one can get used to once the novelty has passed". Heaven, or whatever influence out there, help us if that is now to be accepted. We're already nine tenths down the same rabbit hole (actually a contracted mind virus) that mutated the Weimar Republic into the Nazi Reich.
But Morrow wasn't finished, leaving the most off -the -wall remarks until near the end, even invoking the Stockholm syndrome, in which kidnap victims begin to cooperate and even admire their captors. He writes:
"Familiarity and the passage of time may breed a certain kind of acquiescence, even grudging acceptance. We see a touch of the Stockholm syndrome.
My guess is that the variations on Stockholm syndrome will play a role in the minds of independent voters in the 2018 midterms, producing a slightly friendlier inclination toward Mr. Trump and anyway, toward Republicans."
In other words, this hack is predicting an entire swath of voters - by virtue of exposure and "familiarity" to Dotard's excesses - will "acquiesce" and mutate into a form of kidnapped victims. In such a condition, like compliant captives, they will be more inclined to vote Trump and the GOP. If this is indeed the case, and I hope to hell independents have more self awareness and intelligence than that, we are truly in "duck's guts" - to use the Bajan phrase.
But it's clear to me that Morrow, who I once admired when he wrote sensibly for TIME, has now devolved into a whore for the WSJ-FOX News axis. Evident by his shameless peddling this "Left is pathological" bunkum, as well as a Stockholm syndrome kind of submission to an insane, autocratic dingbat. Further, his judgment can no longer be trusted if he - like Henninger- resorts to such egregious (and outrageous) false equivalence, and acceptance of the gross, deranged and disreputable.
The masterful trick attempted by Morrow as well as Henninger and their pals at FOX News - and Dotard himself - has been to portray themselves as the aggrieved little victims when their obnoxious side of enabling thugs controls congress, the presidency and now the highest court. Worse, with each passing day, as the Post editorial described, they are wreaking untold havoc on the nation's democratic norms. Thereby the danger is increasing that as time goes on this despicable behavior will become as accepted as whipped cream on strawberry shortcake.
At the same time those who seek to express their views are derided as "the mob" and anarchists, or "radicals, when the protesters of Kavanaugh were merely exercising their free speech rights. But see, this is the nature of authoritarian and fascist rule: it criminalizes and marginalizes all speech and behavior intended as rigorous criticism of the reigning cabal or autocrats. Ask the Philippines' Duterte or Turkey's Erdogan, or even better the Saudi Prince Trump loves so much - who had WaPo journalist Jamal Khashoggi chopped up into tiny pieces and then bagged at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. What was Khashoggi's "crime"? Criticizing the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for his anti-democratic moves, including house arrest of members of the same Saudi family! See e.g. Mr. Khashoggi's final column.
That incident alone - as well as Trump's self admitted fondness for tyrants - ought to convince you his lot are not on the side of democracy. Oh no. And no, it is emphatically not a case of "Americans not processing Trump correctly" - as WSJ idiot Holman Jenkins Jr. claimed in his eponymous op-ed today.
To say the coming election is epochal and historic is to put it mildly. If, in fact, the lawless, Reep party maintains its control of all branches of government we will have entered a parlous, perilous period indeed. Perhaps the most perilous in the nation's history. This is given that in such a case the protection of traitor Trump will be doubled down on even as the GOOps are emboldened to enact even more vile policies, including extending their budget busting tax cuts to impoverish the next generation and cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
In addition, such a ghastly scenario would mean, in the words of David Leonhardt's NY Times piece:
"Total victory for the G.O.P. would mean Trump unleashed."
In Leonhardt's own words:
"It would be validation for Trump, who could then brag that he had defied the experts once again. It would mean he had outperformed Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman, all of whom suffered drubbings in the first midterm election of their presidency. It would embolden Trump to push even harder toward the America he wants — where corporate oversight is scant, climate change is ignored, voting rights are abridged, health care is a privilege, judicial independence is a fiction and the truth is whatever he says it is."
So multiply all the craziness, all the chaos and vileness, by about one hundred, and you'd get some idea what we'd be in for.
Flat bottom line? There will have to be a blue wave large enough to at least flip the House to the Dems, or we are all in deep trouble. If you think the past two years was a nightmare, imagine a nightmare on hallucinogenic steroids!
Update: Oct. 22 - As if Dotard's "crazy Dem mobs" wasn't enough, the deranged fucker is now trying to harness the Honduras-originating caravan through Mexico - headed toward the U.S. - into the mix, scribbling on his Twitter:
"The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat Party. Change the immigration laws NOW!
Again, this misfit maggot creates hysteria out of strawmen for his fool base, given the Dems have nothing to do with the caravan. It is composed of thousands seeking only to escape the relentless gang violence in their homeland. But having exhausted issues to rev up his cult of toadies and morons, this is all he is left with - incendiary rhetoric along the lines of "this mob of foreigners is coming for ya and the Dems are behind it." Even more reason, as if we needed any more, to be sure to put a check on this asshole via a D-congress. .
See also:
Trump Openly Celebrates the Assault of a Journalist While Campaigning in Montana
Excerpt:
On Thursday, Trump made it clear he's not ashamed of Gianforte's actions — he's proud of them.
"By the way, never wrestle him," Trump said of Gianforte at the campaign rally. "You understand that? Never. Any guy that can do a bodyslam, he's my kind of ... he's my guy. I shouldn't say this. But there's nothing to be embarrassed about!"
And:
