I asked myself, why are the liberals all of a sudden so moral about Trump's business decisions? Isn't liberalism the party of relative morality and immorality? Trump was using relative morality based on what was legal. He should be the poster child for liberalism.
Sometimes, Wellwisher,
you are the last person you or anyone else should be asking about anything. For instance, part of your confusion is that you have never understood this "liberalism" thing you're so trembling afraid of.
Those who actually pay attention to history, and among that set especially those who lived through it, would remember that in the old Cold War split between liberalism as communism and conservatism as capitalism, Donald Trump thrived according to conservative principles of business and politics.
One of the reasons society is so horrified by this aspect of Trump is that Americans don't want to admit the $915m tax write-off and other seemingly infamous stunts were, in fact, the system We the People put in place. Donald Trump is the apex of Reaganite postcapitalist voodoo; he is the full character of that cult on full display. It's true, one thing Donald Trump gets to complain about―though part of the answer is that he's just that
not smart― is that he probably has no idea when and how the world changed so much; it's like he woke up one day and suddenly the basis of his fame had become the foundation of his infamy.
Back in the day, when all that history was being made, liberals could have and
did tell society what's wrong. But we were criticized as just being bad for the economy, down on America, and far too commie for anyone to actually pay attention to. At least, that's how it was around here. I don't know, maybe that was back in the time when Hillary Clinton was wandering around your neighborhood hacking children to death with a machete because, you know, why not, since people will believe anything because it's her, right?
Remember this: Republicans can complain about Bill Clinton surviving his trials, both in the court of public opinion and on the Congressional floor, all they want, but he survived those trials. Donald Trump defended him, then. And given what people already knew about Donald Trump, his business history, his infamous infidelity and sexism, and his generally boorish behavior, conservatives still went and nominated him for president. And now, as we're seeing, Donald Trump just doesn't have what it takes to survive the court of public opinion. Then again, those years after Bill Clinton's infamy, the really, really famous guy who really, really likes being famous still wasn't smart enough to figure out to not talk like that
on camera.
It's kind of weird, because Donald Trump
is somewhat smart. Even if we want to say he's simply gangster-smart, he still survived and prospered as he did. Yet he's pretty much as stupid as he has shown us in this presidential run, and suddenly all the people who were supposed to look up to him in the eighties, nineties, and the first decade of the new century find themselves needing to pretend to be appalled, which really ought to be easy enough since they have spent decades pretending to be appalled about everything anal sex to zygotal existentialism, yet still can't pull off with a straight face.
Seriously, the thing that gets me is that once again, America is going to have to lower its standards because our society simply can't function properly if we disqualify
that many people for being
that ridiculously stupid.
It's always a little weird watching people pretend to be surprised. The surprising thing isn't that Donald Trump has a closet full of skeletons, it's that we're supposed to pretend to be surprised. It's like trying to figure the Trump response to any of this; as long as people compare him to baseline norms, none of this makes sense. But, yes, he's running a campaign styled after internet trolling. And, you know, Mike Pence is what it looks like in the hands of the GOP Old Guard; his constant denials and pretense of ignorance during his debate with Kaine pretty much reminded me of what passed for respectable discussion with some conservatives around here, in which reality is subject to equivocation―see, the basic idea is that when one side of the argument is reality, and the other side is an observable denial of reality, the only logical, fair, and therefore proper thing to do is violate reality in order to weigh the claims as equal testaments unto the unknown.
Consider that liberal writers like
Steve Benen↱ can notch easy points without lifting a finger to distort:
Obviously, the accusers’ claims and Trump’s denials will draw careful scrutiny, but purely as a political matter, I can’t think of any controversy that’s followed such an unusual trajectory:
1. Trump is heard boasting on tape about groping women.
2. Trump said his boasts weren’t true and that he never actually groped women.
3. A variety of accusers came forward to allege they were, in fact, groped by Trump.
4. Trump and his campaign insist there’s no reason to believe these women, so long as we overlook the recording of Trump’s previous comments.
It’s like watching a more traditional campaign scandal play out in reverse.
The only reason those four points should confuse anyone is that they are a Republican who often puts on a pretense of being confused by such realities. And it's so blatant that the hits keep coming. To wit, conservatives make it easy when one can turn around, as
Benen↱ did, and flow so easily into the next, easily served, prefabricated (by the Trump campaign) question of disaster:
In other words, when any of the various damaging revelations―about Trump’s finances, his boasts about his romances, women who allege he groped them―the Republican candidate’s staff has no prepared response because they don’t know what’s coming.
As we talked about when Corn’s piece first ran, it would be a mistake for any national candidate to skip this examination, but for a guy like Trump―whose record includes a long list of personal and professional controversies―it represented an enormous risk.
It now appears that was a gamble that failed to pay off.
It's gotten to the point that I'm chuckling about a libertarian associate who hates Hillary Clinton insisting that Donald Trump is a strong campaigner because, well, as idiotic as his mincing, hand-wringing, ooh-can-the-little-lady-do-a-man's-job sideshow is, he's still not as far gone as his conservative neighbors who, unlike him, at least have the courage of their convictions to admit they want Mr. Trump to be president.
And that makes for a dangerous time. As the commentariat begins to assert that it's over, that Trump has buried himself, it's not that I don't get
why they're saying it. Rather, I also bear in mind that these are American voters we're talking about, and if we could be so blithely confident about American voters in general, then Republicans would have nominated a decent candidate.
It's weird, but right now my superstition is pinging me because confidence feels like overconfidence. With forecast percentages for Hillary Clinton ranging between eighty and a ridiculous ninety-six percent, I don't disbelieve it because I think the numbers are skewed, but, rather I disbelieve doctrinally because I must, otherwise I'm about to catch a proverbial two-by-four to the skull.
And what is even scarier is that strong discussion has become completely abstract; the upshot will be that as we cluster up to discuss sympathetically we will do so in some useful way instead of clustering up to fuck ourselves.
I get what the numbers are telling me. It feels really, really scary because it's just not ever supposed to feel this way. And it's true,
only Donald Trump. That is how warped this is getting.
Only Donald Trump could create this bizarre an effect. Watching historians scramble through the short term, after it's over; and then try to figure out, through the middle term, just what they did in the short and what all those scribbled notes are supposed to mean; and then in the long term, as we finally start to build a composite thesis explaining what has happened here, will be one of the most fascinating chapters of our American tale. It will become the stuff of legend. This period might well have secured for all time
Idiocracy’s seat in the panthea of cinematic and narrative accomplishments.
We're already in
Tropic Thunder territory, and Mr. Trump might well be preparing to attempt "full retard". That is to say, the question to that end is whether Trump's legions bring violence in the wake of their apparently impending electoral loss, and what role Mr. Trump, who
appears to be sewing just those seeds↑, actually has in fomenting that unrest.
All logic says Donald Trump should lose this election, and badly; and we seem to have a pretty good idea why. And, yes, that feels
really weird. Yet, strangely, the prospect that everybody really does know what's about to happen to the point that candidate and supporters alike are already complaining doesn't assuage.
It's a weird enough cycle without you spinning a whole new surrogate fantasy.
