How Donald Trump and compulsive right-wingers gave President Obama a second term.
or
Inmates Running the Asylum: Why the madness of Romney, Gingrich, Perry et al will doom the planet
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Failing Upwards: How losing can help the GOP win…and then lose.
Jesus, it’s been a while. I never update this damn thing anymore, probably because I write my column weekly in print, and I never had the strength to re-write the rants here. But I need to begin utilizing this tool, and since there isn’t an issue of The Journal for the better part of a month, I’ll be needing an outlet for my work. Most writers are like this: compulsive and insistent about their work. There is a strange kind of fever that comes over, when that moment of inspiration strikes. Like overwhelming sexual arousal or the first drag of a cigarette: you no longer have an option, you simply must.
Donald Trump is a worthless scumbag. Not the best transition, I know, but at least it’s brief and honest. Normally, men like the Donald wouldn’t even warrant more than the occasional scoff and 30 seconds on the nightly news when he goes bankrupt for the 23rd time. But in an election year, the moon is always funny, and strange creatures emerge from the blackness. Trump is one of the creatures, along with the rest of the band of cartoon characters currently trying to suckle from the teet of the right-wing silent majority.
Unemployment is sky high and the mortgage crisis hasn’t finished beating this country to an ugly pulp just yet. By all accounts, President Obama should be on the ropes and the Republicans should have this whole thing locked up by the convention. But they don’t, because there hasn’t been such an epically, deliberately bad cast of candidates in modern memory. Certainly there hasn’t been any group on either side of the aisle as pathetic as the Republican nominees for President. So when men like Donald Trump are being interviewed and considered for the role, or hosting debates, survivalists tend to begin stocking bomb shelters.
Trump is proof that this year you don’t need qualifications, just the right set of lines.
Do you hate President Obama’s entire legislative agenda? Do you question the legality of his birth (and, implicitly his patriotism and his race)? Are you in favor of less taxes (make sure not to get more specific than that)? Congratulations! All you need is a bizarre prejudice, an off-putting demeanor and large quantities of heavy narcotics and you could be the next GOP frontrunner!
With crippling lack of popular support and ugly personal backgrounds nearly every one of these walking nightmares has already disqualified himself on face value alone. And as soon as they open their mouths you’ll find that every one of these fascists holds positions conservative enough to make Barry Goldwater blush. Some of them want to make income tax illegal, successfully reverting the nation to a 1912 budget. Others want to abolish the Department of Education and the EPA.
In particular, the EPA has been the whipping boy of every good Republican in this race. While Rick Perry (a man so unashamedly unqualified to be President that large numbers of his aides are said to be planning a mass suicide before the Iowa caucus) likes to claim that we are actually in the middle of a “global cooling period,” and calls global warming and invention of Al Gore, the rest of the Republicans are tripping over themselves to out-holy-shit each other. Nevermind that the EPA is the brainchild of the Nixon administration (possibly the most recognizable politician for any of the current band of thieving pigs). In fact, Barry Goldwater said of environmental regulation in 1970:
“While I am a great believer in the free-enterprise system,” the Arizona senator said in 1970, “I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean, pollution-free environment.”
That’s Conscious of a Conservative Barry Goldwater. Each candidate seems determined to undermine any Republican agenda previously approved by the general public. The conservationist habits of Teddy Roosevelt are gone for the convenience of offshore drilling. There is an unofficial competition among all the candidates. A competition: Can you Top This?
-Rick Perry proposes a fence the entire length of the boarder, seconding Michele Bachmann. Perry favors militarized weaponry on the fence. Point to Perry.
—Herman Cain proposes ELECTRIFIED fence the length of the boarder. Crocodile, moats and hot-tar still in development. Point to Cain.
-Rick Santorum calls gays “ungodly” and vows to ban gay marriage and reinstate DADT.
—Rick Perry makes his “strong” ad in which he openly criticizes gay men and women currently serving openly in our armed forces. Perry, unaware that insulting the troops is a good way to piss off everybody in the country, apparently is just happy to be involved.
I’m sure you know the rest, and I don’t need to reiterate a series of monumental series of bloopers and blunders for you to get the point. The insanity of this race, the permissible level of totally indefensible positions is destroying the system of Presidential campaigning. Not a single meaningful discussion will be had in this whole race. The actors will take the stage, hold their press conferences and smile for the cameras, but nothing will be said, because they’ll be foaming at the mouth and raving about flat taxes and immigrants.
Most people I know are broke, or on the verge of broke. The one’s that aren’t broke aren’t rich. People aren’t hiring, crime is everywhere and apparently large factions of the Middle Eastern and Asian world really hates us. But none of the politicians — particularly the ones running for President for the Grand Ol Party — are going to talk about that stuff. They’re worn to the bone. Many of them will be campaigning for 15 months or more before the whole deed is done, and that kind of shameless self-promotion can drive anyone to madness.
It’s no wonder Romney seems so desperately inhuman and detached. He doesn’t recognize faces anymore, his whole body is on auto-campaign. Gingrich, from years of systematic bullshitting, is something of a transparent, empty man, despite his considerable girth. When you spend years lying, selling, cheating and fucking you’re bound to lose part of your soul. Chalk the rest of the field’s failings up to stupidity and birth defects (Jon Hunstmans was tragically born without a personality. Very sad.) and you suddenly have a race to the bottom.
Way down at the bottom is where you’ll find the 2012 nominee. He’ll have a whole pile of shit heaped on him and the whole he is digging won’t take him to the White House. Maybe to China, but not the White House.
So, speaking as a registered Democrat, I encourage all candidates to keep digging. Keep heaping shit all over the place until it’s all we can see. Then maybe your outside will match your inside.
