Perhaps the wheels are finally starting to fall off the improbable Drumpf war wagon. More’s the pity, as his nomination would all but guarantee that the Dems would not only retain the presidency, but regain control of the Senate, the US Supreme Court, and a distant possibility, the House as well.
People who are in a position to actually know what they’re talking about have been warning for years that demonizing Muslims and their religion plays right into the hands of terrorist groups people who are in a position to actually know what they’re talking about— have been warning for years that demonizing Muslims and their religion plays right into the hands of terrorist groups like al Qaeda and Daesh/Isil/Isis.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren stirred up a Twitter Twister Storm yesterday, warning that Donald Drumpf “stands ready to tear apart an America that was built on values like decency, community, and our neighbors.” Among other things, she called him “a loser; a failed businessman; a scammer; a bully; and an authoritarian. She depicts him as a flagrant narcissist whose “insecurities…petty bullying, attacks on women, [and] cheap racism” are on parade, for the whole world to see.
Hard-working citizens have been forced to dip into their wallets to rescue the very people that destroyed so much of their personal economic futures. The downwardly mobile American electorate has, by and large, an intuitive understanding that they are being royally screwed by the Powers That Be even if they aren’t familiar with the particulars.
Drumpf’s strategy seems to be to ratchet up the public’s sense of fear and anxiety about everyone from terrorists to immigrants to Muslims going to school or vacationing in the U.S., and then say: “Who’s your daddy? Who’s going to protect you? Little Marco? That “pussy,” Lying Ted Cruz?”…Drumpf’s strategy seems to be to ratchet up the public’s sense of fear and anxiety about everyone from terrorists to immigrants to Muslims going to school or vacationing in the U.S., and then say: “Who’s your daddy? Who’s going to protect you? Little Marco? That “pussy,” Lying Ted Cruz?”
The Lord of the Flies
Which brings us to the Lord of the Flies. (Required reading for Drumpf campaign strategists and available as an index in the Donald Drumpf Playbook of World Domination.) The story begins with a group of young boys who crash-land on a deserted island and are forced to create some semblance of a social order until they can be rescued by adults. Though they start off well, electing a leader and creating a basic division of labor, things deteriorate as fear of “the beast” replaces rationality, and a large number of them devolve from civilized creatures into outright savages, culminating in the murder of two young boys whose respective intelligence and compassion are seen as “foreign,” as “other.”
(I’ll assume that most readers are familiar with the basic story, as it was required school reading for most of us. But for those who aren’t, or in need of a refresh, the basic plot points; and an exploration of its rather complicated themes and symbolism will be supplied in a subsequent post. For instance, literary critics still debate whether the story is a religious or a Freudian analogy.)
Reported sightings of the Beast initiate a search and destroy mission, led by the character who most resembles Drumpf, a self-asserted leader by the name of Jack. Jack probably doesn’t even believe that the Beast is real, but he does realize how the fear of it can be used to concentrate influence and power into his hands. As the leader of the hunting tribe (comprised of boys who much prefer the excitement of stalking and bloodletting to the drudgeries of community building), Jack leads them on a mission to find and kill the Beast. Their failure to locate it or its lair is rationalized by the theory that it is actually and animal-ghost hybrid, and becomes a fear force multiplier.
The boys do kill a large pig on their first night out. They cut off its head and put it on a steak as a sacrificial offering to the Beast. Later, as the head decomposes in the hot jungle sun, it is suffused by a large cloud of flies, giving the book its title. (Lord of the Flies is the literal translation of the Biblical name for an evil, mischievous spiriby the name of Beezlebub.*) One of the boys, Simon, contemplates the pig’s head and the fear it represents. The head appears to talk to him, revealing that the Beast itself does not exist, but is the externalization of the boys’ own primitive fears being made manifest. When Simon shares this insight with the other boys, he is roundly rejected and then ritualistically murdered.(Apparently just as haters gotta hate, fear mongers gotta fear.)
Moral of the story as applied to Drumpf’s political campaign: Be careful what you ask for.
Foreign Policy Implications
Imagine how Drumpf’s authoritarian bullying would play out on the world stage if he were to become the executor of US foreign policy. He has cited approvingly a statement by the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini that” It is better to live one day as a lion than one hundred years as a sheep.” And he seems anxious to cultivate his budding bromance with the Russian dictator, Vladamir Putin, which Huffpo describes as follows:
As if the Republican Presidential race wasn’t strange enough already, we recently witnessed Russian President Vladimir Putin praising, of all people, Donald Trump. Putin called Trump a brilliant and talented leader who is colorful and “the absolute front-runner in the presidential race.” Trump already in an earlier remark said that he would “probably get along very well” with Putin.
Speaking of authoritarians, it’s no wonder that one of Drumpf’s supporters is Donald Duke, the head of the clueless Klu Klux Klan. Then of course there is Drumpf’s signature foreign policy initiative: building a YUGE wall across the US-Mexican border to keep all those the rapists, murderers, and drug dealers out. And getting Mexico to pay for it, of course. If you believe that, I’ve got a case of Trump Steaks to sell ya.
Media Consequences
If Donald Drumpf can be symbolized as a rotting pig’s head, then the media-industrial-complex can be compared to a hoard of buzzing flies feeding off its rotten flesh. Take the case of Melissa Harris Perry and MSNBC. Though Perry didn’t explicitly cite MSNBC’s relentless Drumpf coverage as a reason for walking away from her fours-hours-a-weak hosting gig, given that the network had preempted her show twice to cover the presidential political races (without even the courtesy of a heads-up to her and her loyal audience of self-described nerds); and given that Drumpf receives the vast amount of coverage compared to other candidates―something like 5 to 1 by all the networks―it’s not hard to conclude that Perry, one of the smartest cable teevee hosts in the business, was a Drumpfian casualty.
For a taste of how MSNBC is doing business these days, consider this from the Sun-Times:
During the middle of a seasoned journalist’s critique on the scope of reporting that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has received, MSNBC cut the programming to give Donald Trump more coverage.
New York Times political reporter Nick Confessorewas saying that the bombastic candidate has dominated news outlets to gain free airtime when the station cut to a rally where the candidate was giving one of his stump speeches.
“Every time he opens his mouth, he’s on national TV,” Confessore said, before getting cut off.http://national.suntimes.com/national-world-news/7/72/2642862/msnbc-cuts-criticism-trump-coverage-short-give-trump-coverage.
Summary
Trump’s use of vitriolic rhetoric against Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants, as well as his misogynistic statements against women, is pushing bullying and incitement to new heights. Which of course fits the present zeitgeist perfectly, because it is precisely the intolerance and fear of The Other that is a major Bogeyman of Trump supporters. On Drumpf Island, his tribe finds license to “go native.”
Now that Mittens is covertly running for president―the clear implication of his desperate call for GOP voters to deprive Dumbledore Drumpf of delegates by voting for whomever has the best chance of beating him one state at a time―it’s time to revisit the Mormon White Horse prophecy.
Well, its time again for the annual Wingnut Woodstock, the Conservative Political Action Conference, aka CPAC. (For past coverage see here; here;and here.) This year’s even will be held in National Harbor, Maryland. (Hopefully, without the bed bugs that plagued the 2011 convention in Washington, D.C.). Featured speakers include all the present GOP presidential wannabes, including gentle Dr. Ben Carson, who …
