Great stuff. Since this is a series I may be jumping the gun on something you’re planning to delve into more deeply tomorrow, but when looking at Trump’s takeover of the GOP it really can’t be overemphasized how seismically *traumatic* Obama’s election (and re-election) was for so many white conservative voters. It literally violated their sense of the natural order. Both Ta-Nehisi Coates and Adam Serwer have spoken to this. So the GOP rank and file were primed for a racist like Trump who would not only say the quiet part out loud but would scream it for the cheap seats.
As I said at the beginning of Trump's 2016 campaign and have reiterated many times since then:
Donald Trump is the Republican id frolicking naked in the fields.
He is everything they have ever wanted in a president: Wildly ignorant on all subjects, yet absolutely certain he knows more than any expert. Aggressively stupid. Greedy and openly corrupt. Demanding of absolute loyalty, yet utterly incapable of being loyal to anyone not his own offspring (and even then . . .). He's everything they want to be.
As a defective human being, my POV is, like, skewed, so while parsing a 2016 GOP primary debate, I thought "Holy shit, he's crossing a line there, opening Pandora's box" when Donnie essentially normalized conservative media's crazy ass spews of insanity. Which is to say, more or less, that Trumpism isn't so much any change in subrange but in selling the same old GOP shit to the masses.
That media poobahs all along the spectrum have any problem (or I guess reluctance) treating Trumpism as at little as it is, well, gets to make regular rant that there's literally little more than a handful of pundits in mainstream media of any worth.
That said, what else Trumpism is is a cult of and for losers led by a huge, historic loser.
Well, Lindsay Graham was right. The Republicans can't win without Trump. Especially in an environment where the Democrats are offering free education and child care (even free dental and vision coverage for seniors!) the traditional Republican message becomes "No, you can't have that... or that... and no, not that either", and who wants that shit?
Is there anyone as studiedly clueless as Ezra Klein? I know his heart seems to be generally in the right place, but how does a person wake up day after day, year after year, dewy-eyed and puzzled as Cindy Lou Who on Christmas morning to discover what the Republicans were really up to?
It's finally turning to autumn here (thanks, Global Warming! for the extra days of summer), so I did my annual heating system tune-up and, whaddya know? my Honeywell programmable thermostat was set to switch votes from Biden to Trump! Somebody in China fucked up. I always thought Old Handsome Joe won the state by a lot more than 20,000 votes - hell, I voted for him more times than that myself. When the old judge, Garbleman, finally learns that "elections" are about "people" "casting" "votes," and not making Bingo at the Tuesday Family Night at the American Legion Hall, there's going to be some serious rewriting of the election laws here. Until then, I need to order a new thermostat.
I may have a snazzy new meta-theory on Douthat, Brooks, etc. It's not that they're conservative columnists--that would require them to acknowledge reality but present a conservative interpretation of it. No, I think their approach is, "Let's say the New York Times had a conservative columnist. This is maybe something he or she might write." Not only is it not personal, it's not actual. It's hypothetical.
Some primo shit, Mr. Edroso. Conventional liberal wisdom is that the Republican Party is riding the tiger by appeasing the programmable meatballs (h/t Mr. Driftglass), but I think embracing Trumpism is a proactive choice. Vote suppression and court-packing are long-term cons they've been running for decades. You focus on cheating as your strategy when you know you can't win. I can only assume their number-crunchers have been warning them for decades, Karl Rove's plan to court conservative Hispanics was the same response to that problem, but it was the base and Party activists that rejected it, not the leadersbip.
Various Republicans have attempted the role: Pat Buchannan was an unlikable scold, Sarah Palin had no interest in the work of wielding power, Ted Cruz is unlikable period. But the conditioning that professional politicians (Buchannan was a speechwriter, so he thought his ideas mattered, the idiot) must ensure to receive Party support prevented them from saying the quiet parts out loud.I
Trump didn't break the Party the way Obama did, he steamrolled it. His celebrity gave him a platform and insulated him from any disapproval from the Party, and he showed the Party they were cowards and idiots. They built his audience and gave it to him for free. At most Trump just accelerated the schedule. One of the freshman crop of Republican Congressional lunatics would have assumed his role eventually. Give Madison Cawthorn a guitar and he's Bob Roberts.
Given this history, the embrace of magical realism was inevitable. They said that as we watched, they would create a new reality, and they're doing it now.
Great stuff. Since this is a series I may be jumping the gun on something you’re planning to delve into more deeply tomorrow, but when looking at Trump’s takeover of the GOP it really can’t be overemphasized how seismically *traumatic* Obama’s election (and re-election) was for so many white conservative voters. It literally violated their sense of the natural order. Both Ta-Nehisi Coates and Adam Serwer have spoken to this. So the GOP rank and file were primed for a racist like Trump who would not only say the quiet part out loud but would scream it for the cheap seats.
As I said at the beginning of Trump's 2016 campaign and have reiterated many times since then:
Donald Trump is the Republican id frolicking naked in the fields.
He is everything they have ever wanted in a president: Wildly ignorant on all subjects, yet absolutely certain he knows more than any expert. Aggressively stupid. Greedy and openly corrupt. Demanding of absolute loyalty, yet utterly incapable of being loyal to anyone not his own offspring (and even then . . .). He's everything they want to be.
This is excellent! Now we need to figure out why Young Ezra makes a fuckton of money doing the same thing except it's stupid and shitty.
I wonder if Jonah Goldberg liked to think of himself as the Megatron of Reformicons.
As a defective human being, my POV is, like, skewed, so while parsing a 2016 GOP primary debate, I thought "Holy shit, he's crossing a line there, opening Pandora's box" when Donnie essentially normalized conservative media's crazy ass spews of insanity. Which is to say, more or less, that Trumpism isn't so much any change in subrange but in selling the same old GOP shit to the masses.
That media poobahs all along the spectrum have any problem (or I guess reluctance) treating Trumpism as at little as it is, well, gets to make regular rant that there's literally little more than a handful of pundits in mainstream media of any worth.
That said, what else Trumpism is is a cult of and for losers led by a huge, historic loser.
Well, Lindsay Graham was right. The Republicans can't win without Trump. Especially in an environment where the Democrats are offering free education and child care (even free dental and vision coverage for seniors!) the traditional Republican message becomes "No, you can't have that... or that... and no, not that either", and who wants that shit?
Douthat: “Bloombergist”
Anyone using such pretentious, made-up nonsense words should be given a wedgie so tight they collapse into a singularity.
Is there anyone as studiedly clueless as Ezra Klein? I know his heart seems to be generally in the right place, but how does a person wake up day after day, year after year, dewy-eyed and puzzled as Cindy Lou Who on Christmas morning to discover what the Republicans were really up to?
Great piece. Never saw the base ID'd as smallholders before, but that's the perfect word.
It's finally turning to autumn here (thanks, Global Warming! for the extra days of summer), so I did my annual heating system tune-up and, whaddya know? my Honeywell programmable thermostat was set to switch votes from Biden to Trump! Somebody in China fucked up. I always thought Old Handsome Joe won the state by a lot more than 20,000 votes - hell, I voted for him more times than that myself. When the old judge, Garbleman, finally learns that "elections" are about "people" "casting" "votes," and not making Bingo at the Tuesday Family Night at the American Legion Hall, there's going to be some serious rewriting of the election laws here. Until then, I need to order a new thermostat.
I may have a snazzy new meta-theory on Douthat, Brooks, etc. It's not that they're conservative columnists--that would require them to acknowledge reality but present a conservative interpretation of it. No, I think their approach is, "Let's say the New York Times had a conservative columnist. This is maybe something he or she might write." Not only is it not personal, it's not actual. It's hypothetical.
Two words: Fox News.
Trumpism = conservatism = fascism
The transitive property applies.
Some primo shit, Mr. Edroso. Conventional liberal wisdom is that the Republican Party is riding the tiger by appeasing the programmable meatballs (h/t Mr. Driftglass), but I think embracing Trumpism is a proactive choice. Vote suppression and court-packing are long-term cons they've been running for decades. You focus on cheating as your strategy when you know you can't win. I can only assume their number-crunchers have been warning them for decades, Karl Rove's plan to court conservative Hispanics was the same response to that problem, but it was the base and Party activists that rejected it, not the leadersbip.
Various Republicans have attempted the role: Pat Buchannan was an unlikable scold, Sarah Palin had no interest in the work of wielding power, Ted Cruz is unlikable period. But the conditioning that professional politicians (Buchannan was a speechwriter, so he thought his ideas mattered, the idiot) must ensure to receive Party support prevented them from saying the quiet parts out loud.I
Trump didn't break the Party the way Obama did, he steamrolled it. His celebrity gave him a platform and insulated him from any disapproval from the Party, and he showed the Party they were cowards and idiots. They built his audience and gave it to him for free. At most Trump just accelerated the schedule. One of the freshman crop of Republican Congressional lunatics would have assumed his role eventually. Give Madison Cawthorn a guitar and he's Bob Roberts.
Given this history, the embrace of magical realism was inevitable. They said that as we watched, they would create a new reality, and they're doing it now.
"becomes"
or else as in "That shirt becomes you"