Trumpism Recapitulates Machiavellianism

Deontology

The Teflon Donald

"Not a Crazy Clown"

 

Perhaps you were watching Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday May 27th when Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, gave what was a most cogent explanation of Donald Trump's rise to prominence in the Republican Party. We who embrace rationality firmly believe that the best ideas prevail and that Hillary Clinton needs only to be herself to win the presidency. Adams calls on his training as a hypnotist and study of persuasion to frame Trump as a master manipulator and not the crazy buffoon whom none in the Republican primary clown car could so tar. And the subtext is that we kid ourselves to believe reason will win this campaign.

The Art of the Donald

"I make the best deals," he has said over and over.

And over.

Donald Trump is clearly on the path to his presumptive party's nomination. Cleveland's finest can now breathe easier with or without the event's permission to carry weapons openly. Hillary will feel the troll more than the Bern it feels safe to say.

What will the beltway media's narrative be now that Trump's on track to be coronated, a word which will expire this cycle (one can only hope)?

Twittiquette, Favorites, and #Holy Crap America

At the risk of sounding like I fully embrace never having socially networked, I actually have done it. So hashtag ipso facto.

I checked Twitter for Dummies and believe I have just made something akin to sense.

My greatest fear has always been that once so embracing I could never make sense again. Hashtag am I right people? I wouldn't know. (Well I have a whiff of the knowledges, as Poirot might have said, struggling in a second language. Let's say he actually did, 'kay?) What strikes me as the absurdity of this modern paradigm cum affliction is that to participate is never being able to go back. Go back to what?

Barely One Week's Worth of Campaign Meat

The rest is what in pet food terms is "filler"

I hate the media business with the heat of a thousand night lights. It is, after all, the nature of what they do; they are in business. No model for that says to give it away. No, you must cash in. Thus my hatred is significantly tempered.

Roiling more than boiling.

When I once blogged at a site which promoted social networking as well as writing, the most frequent retort to a rant about this or that outlet was that it was my fault for not going to site x, y, or z.

The regular savvy readers here, whom we reckon by less than a dozen, have no doubt entered into mourning over al Jazeera America shutting down. It had given the huddled discarded refuse of the mainstream a home since buying out Al Gore's Current TV. We shall miss their diligence and never cave to calling their reportage "quaint" nor seek solace in the superior gladhanding of the freshly empowered home brew journalists we must surely someday hate with the heat of a thousand 25 watt bulbs.

Endowed by Their Creator

Notice it doesn't say "The Creator"

 

And before the errant Yahoo commenter (or the one in the local paper who uses the moniker "citizen") goes off on "divine Providence," let's remember that our revolutionists couldn't have wished to be dismissed as readily as modern-day liberals are dismissed so adverbially adjectivally by reactionary preconditioned spoutings (ginning up a signature brand of cocksure superiority). It remains difficult for aspirants to power to neglect godliness in the public sphere. Would it weren't a fact of life.

The royalists in the colonies and the folks back home wore religion sanctimoniously and the dipping of toes into such phraseology can hardly be termed a call for theocracy to replace monarchy. Yet reinterpretation is nothing if not fair game to those for whom there is no responsible push-back.

So when Ted Cruz says he's a Christian first and an American second, as reported by the Associated Press, he's BusTed for selective reading of the framers' intent. I would add: unfit for the job to which he aspires and that which he holds; but he is not alone among right wingers in that regard. Mr. "no government is better than the one we have - that'll learn 'em when we shut the whole thing down" is so far off base on this he's at the free throw line. 

It may suit the both siderist manifesto that everything is fair game for a daily litigation of the shallowest dimension, but people with critical thinking skills formed and preserved since the fourth grade are rightly aghast at media's chronic flinching in reporting the obvious. We, savvy reader, are not looking to join a club that reinforces the selective. Rather, we join to share our allegiance to the republic.

Was there ever a time when that level of patriotism could be so exploited as a political weakness? Sadly, they are innumerable but, I dare say, not from so far out in the cold.

Remembering When a Joke Was a Joke

It was late 2000, while the Supremes were denying Al Gore the presidency by allowing the Florida recount to commence (but to be done by midnight tonight), that David Letterman's website solicited viewer top ten lists. My entry to "top ten better ways to choose a president" earned me a nice t-shirt.

"The one with biggest 'chad' - if you know what I mean."

That was then. This is now.

(Unintelligible Yelling)

Thursday's Houston Debate Reenactors

clockwise from left Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson (not pictured John Kasich)

BRAKING NEWS!

 



 

THE Problem

The ability to control social pressures would be a boon to people who are on the losing sides of rational arguments. What if you could mutate the language outright or use the social scientists' and behaviorists' discoveries about word associations and subliminal meanings?

What if you could turn propaganda into destination television and browsing favorites? Social pressure would then take over when, in intimate groupings, the dubious factoids and ad hominem smears could be made cool.

She/he might say "x,y,z" and going along or providing a topper would be so much more sociable than slamming the door emphatically shut on such utter bullsh*t. What if you could stigmatize facts into no longer being necessary for thinking and feeling? Demonize journalism as being biased and not worth your time?

It's all about the gut to the hidden persuaders.