Not that anything Trump has done of late, or in the last year, for that matter, comes as any surprise to me. I have known for years that he was unstable, foolish, boorish, a true low-life, and completely untrustworthy. I’ve said so and written so, and nobody has ever provided a serious or substantive rebuttal. However, the Republican party’s cowardly and addled leaders actually allowed this narcissistic creep to represent their party, laughably known as the Grand Old Party and now behaving as the Pathetically Stupid Party, and Americans who supposedly did not require the assistance of the Americans With Disability Act–you know, for brain damage—actually voted for him in primaries, attend his rallies and tell pollsters that he’s the berries. This was inexplicable at the time, but eventually enough is enough, even for the gullible and the dim. It better be.
Ever since the debate, Trump has been madly engaged in trashing a woman of no significance whatsoever, continuing a beef he had with her years ago when she was a Miss Universe and gained too much weight for his liking. I had completely forgotten about the incident when Clinton mentioned it in the debate to goad Trump, and it would have had no impact whatsoever if The Donald had the sense God gave a sea sponge, the self-control of a well-raised 12-year-old, or the manners of your more refined Jerry Springer guest. (I’m not requiring of him the kind of character and conduct one would reasonably expect of a President: that would be asking too much.)
Instead, Trump has gone on his most bizarre and disqualifying Twitter rampage yet, which is saying something.
Between 3:20 and 5:30 a.m. this morning, he issued a series of tweets attacking the ex-beauty queen and Hillary Clinton. Hillary, he wrote “was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an “angel” without checking her past, which is terrible!” Next, he asserted that Hillary helped the woman—I am not using her name because I could not care less about her, and neither should Trump— become a United States citizen so that the Democratic nominee could mention her during the debate to attack him.
Best of all, he accused the woman of making a sex tape. Such a classy guy.
Why is a Presidential candidate engaging in a gutter squabble with a completely irrelevant woman whom nobody cares about nor should? Why is he inflicting wounds on his campaign with such undignified and self-destructive conduct over a trivial grudge, when he is supposed to have more important objectives, like, say, winning the Presidency, meeting the expectations of his supporters, and providing a viable alternative to the most corrupt and untrustworthy major party candidate imaginable, since no one sane could have imagined him?
There’s only one reason why, and it is as obvious as the blazing light of a super-nova, a T-Rex in the bathroom or a nuclear explosion. Donald Trump is a complete, irredeemable, irresponsible, immature, reckless idiot, and a national embarrassment. Any public figure who does not publicly reject him after this latest display deserves ignominy and and public contempt forever. His staff should resign, his donors should issue regrets, and those who endorsed him should beg for forgiveness. If he loses the election in a landslide that sweeps the Republican Party into the ash bin of history with the Whigs and the Dixiecrats, good. They earned it. I’ll be taking names: Rudy Giuliani? Chris Christie? Paul Ryan? Newt Gingrich? Ted Cruz? Sean Hannity? (Well, we all knew Sean was an idiot, so this is just frosting on the cake…) Hide your heads under sacks, all of you. I’m revolted to be of the same nationality, species, and phylum with any of you.
As for you voters who would knowingly place a man with such wretched judgment and lack of self control in a position to affect their lives and mine, you have proven that those hated “elites” who incurred your wrath by ignoring you all these years had a terrific reason: you-are-morons. You can’t be trusted to put shoes on the right feet, much less govern yourselves. Jefferson, Paine, Madison, Franklin and Adams weren’t counting on the civic literacy of the American public slipping below that of a Brittany Spaniel in less than 250 years. If they had, they would have just paid the damn tea tax and be done with it.
It’s time to be open, honest, transparent and throw down the gauntlet. Let all those with IQs under 100 vote for Trump, and anyone whose intellect edges into positive territory vote against him. If, thanks to genetic selection, birth control, perverse incentives, a miserable education system and intellect-rotting popular culture the really, really stupid people have the upper hand, at least we’ll know, and stop pretending otherwise.
Don’t worry: just a few well-aimed hammer swings to the forehead, and you’ll fit right in.
Ethics Alarms 
Why didn’t Kellyanne Conway demand and then change his twitter password? Why is he allowed to send his own tweets?
Better yet, why doesn’t she resign? Every second anyone is tied to Trump, their standing on the cognitve dissonance scale falls lower.
Let me answer your question with a question. What’s the difference between a Trump campaign surrogate and a prostitute?
Prostitutes are much smarter, and have some self-respect.
You know, Jack, I find your stuff a pretty mixed bag–conservative elitist pushes some of my buttons–but dang I enjoyed this.
My life has not been in vain.
Set the IQ bar a little lower. by definition something like half the population has IQ below or equal to 100 and that leaves him too close to winning…
The average IQ in the US is about 98, supposedly. The silver lining is that once you get below about 70, the chances of you mailing in your ballot correctly becomes a matter of luck.
Trump’s nomination takes pandering to the base to a completely new level!
You can’t be trusted to put shoes on the right feet, much less govern yourselves. Jefferson, Paine, Madison, Franklin and Adams weren’t counting on the civic literacy of the American public slipping below that of a Brittany Spaniel in less than 250 years. If they had, they would have just paid the damn tea tax and be done with it.
It’s time to be open, honest, transparent and throw down the gauntlet. Let all those with IQs under 100 vote for Trump, and anyone whose intellect edges into positive territory vote against him. If, thanks to genetic selection, birth control, perverse incentives, a miserable education system and intellect-rotting popular culture the really, really stupid people have the upper hand, at least we’ll know, and stop pretending otherwise.
These are the same kinds of “morons” that put Obama in for 8 years. How’s that working out for us. We are about to suffer 8 more years of the same, if not worse. We are slowly becoming a third world country because of the moronic electorate.
Judith Gianareles judyg@unseen.is ——————————————————— Never ignore a person who loves and cares for you, because one day you may realize that you’ve lost the moon while counting the stars.
>
It appears that you and many of the other commentators are advocating for literacy tests for voters. I wonder how Deery would feel about that?
I don’t think Jack was being literal, but yes, the ableism of this post bugged me. Trump support has nothing to do with IQ–and in fact, I’ve seen mentally disabled people speak out against him because of his mocking of the disabled reporter and others acts of bullying.
Oh, you are ridiculous. Is it ablism to assert that stupid people should not be entrusted with tasks it takes intelligence to do competetently? You’re so poisoned by leftist group-think you probably think so. That is like saying that it is ablist to say that paraplegics have no business being firemen. Who lobotomized YOU Chris, to make such a silly statement?
“Trump support has nothing to do with IQ” : really? Doing something per se irresponsible, dangerous and idiotic has nothing to do with being incapable of basic critical thought? WRONG. No one who is thinking rationally can vote for Trump unless they want chaos. I know some do. That is also not a rational position.
Why is it ridiculous to call things what they are? Denigrating people with mental disabilities is called ableism. What would you like me to call it instead?
And yes, as far as I’m aware there is no correlation between low IQ and Trump support. People with high IQs rationalize themselves into doing dumb shit all the time.
Not dumb shit like this. Noooo. Now there are totally corrupt people who might support Trump for perceived personal gain, But I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about people who really will take action to make him President.
Your silly politically correct illogic is knee-jerk nonsense. I denigrate people whose disability adversely affects me and others. I’m sorry if you are born or made stupid, but I will denigrate you to make sure you understand your limitations, and act accordingly and responsibly. A stupid woman teaching my son will be shamed and denigrated., and should be. A stupid man running for a job he cannnot do should be shamed and denigrated, and so should every stupid person assisting and enabling. Society has no obligation to protect the incompetent from self-awareness to society’s detriment. Where did you ever get such a nutty idea? It has the opposite obligation.
Call it the Fredo Principle. Fredo thinks he’s smart, and that’s what gets him into trouble. There is nothing kind or wise about pretending handicaps don’t exist nor is it unethical for us to require those with handicaps to behave responsibly.
It’s not even competent ableism here. An IQ of 100 is literally average — by definition, half the country (or half the world) is below that. That’s leaving out the whole “IQ isn’t a thing” issue — the notion of a quotient intelligence was rejected as essentially pseudoscientific decades ago.
Oh, pshaw. It’s not a clinical discussion, and you know it. IQ is used as it is commonly used, to indicate relative intelligence. I know all about the limitations of the scoring, the many forms of intelligence the test don’t measure, etc. The bitching here is an example of intentionally misconstruing the obvious, for manufactured outrage. Just stop it.
Yes, half the population is insufficiently intelligent, and that’s one reason why the world is a mess. This observation offends you? Then reality offends you.
Not to get pedantic, but is 100 *average* or is it “median”.
If half are below and half are above, I think that’s median.
The average could be way lower… or could even be higher than 100…
Not that it matters to the conclusion that the “ablist” complaint is right up there with cultural appropriation in the pantheon of 21st century progressive nonsense. Remember, we’re not talking about discrimination against the handicapped. We’re talking about the bizarre assertion that recognizing that certain physical or mental limitations make one less able to handle certain tasks and responsibilities, because this commits the sin of asserting that not being, say, stupid, is a less preferable state than being a whole lot smarter, or at least smart enough to know that Donald Trump has as much business being President as my dog has singing Rigoletto.
This was one of those ideas that someone thought up as another way to muck up the culture, and for some reason, everyone else didn’t immediately laugh in their faces. I live near Galluadet, and the firts time I heard deaf activists argue that it was “ablist” to suggest that cochlear transplants that could cure deafness in some kids were a desirable thing, I thought it was a joke. And it was, except that nobody had the courage to laugh.
I am advocating no such thing. There are many Constitutional remedies to the this problem. One is to have those too dumb, ignorant, senile or irresponsible to vote decide that it is better if they don’t. I know people who have decided that. Another is to do a better job educating the young and make history, government and civics..and ethics…priorities, rather than afterthoughts. Another yet is for the culture to stop making heroes, role models and opinion-leaders out of certifiably dumb people: Kim Kardashian, Sean Hannity, Trump, singers, actors, Michele Bachman and Joe Biden.
It has been a very bad two weeks for anyone trying to find a sane place to cast their vote. I’ve been able to vote in presidential elections since 1980 and I believe that this is the first of all those elections that absolutely none of the party candidates, including Libertarian and Green, is without clearly disqualifying flaws of action or capability. Trump being the most egregious of the lot, and rest of the pack not far behind for differing reasons. At the moment I’d be willing to vote for a candidate with whom I disagreed with almost completely, if I was satisfied of their essential integrity and competency. But even that minimal standard is no longer possible.
I suspect most people who will vote for him do not actually support him.
A vote for Trump is a vote for chaos and fascism. Now, we have enough protections in place to protect us from Trump’s fascist tendencies, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be a rough ride for the next four years if he is elected.
Even if you think Clinton is a criminal, she is at least a competent one.
Trump’s targeting of private citizens who criticize him makes him far worse for freedom of speech than Hillary Clinton. There have been accusations that Clinton targeted the women who had affairs with Bill for destruction, but as far as I can tell, they are just rumors. Trump has gone after the Khans, and now Alicia Machado with a vengeance never before seen in politics. He really does think dissidents need to be publicly destroyed. I bet Machado is getting tons of harassment and threats today, which Trump has encouraged by publicly slut-shaming her (despite his own past and his wife’s).
I have no problem believingHillary Clinton lies to cover her tracks. I don’t even have a problem believing she will work to destroy people who expose things she doesn’t want exposed (though claims she’s had people killed are crazy). But Trump lies to destroy people who criticize him. He’ll lie for any reason, -!; for no reason at all. There’s a big difference.
Bingo.
And his desire for revenge over petty offenses drives him so crazy that he can’t sleep at night — to the point where he gets out of bed at 3 am to tweet nonsensical rants about his purported enemies. Yeah, let’s elect this guy to be leader of the free world.
If you vote for Trump, you are an idiot. And before people accuse me of group-think, I voted for Kasich in the primaries; i.e.,a grown-up.
Kasich is an interesting choice. If you look at his career and policies, he is every bit as right wing as Cruz. The only reason he looks reasonable is because of the clowns he occupies the stage with.
As for being a grown up, he came across as a whiny little girl to me, always flopping his arms around. And that business with the ticket and the police officer is, by itself, enough to disqualify him.
I thought he was the best of the lot. Cruz scared me, and Rubio isn’t the brightest bulb.
I hear people say this, but I don’t see it/get it. He (along with Carly, for awhile) were my picks. What, about him, is it that you view as not bright?
And let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
I think Rubio is polished when it comes to his talking points, but he is light on policy in general. There wasn’t a lot of substance to his positions. But he looks good on camera and he is young — I see why the GOP got behind him.
He also isn’t a very good Senator. And, for such a young politician, there already is some corruption there. Remember the letter where he endorsed his brother-in-law (an ex-con) for a government deal in FL and did not disclose the fact that he was a relation and a prior criminal?
I get what you’re saying, but please don’t pretend that there was a “good” reason for her to claim she flew into Bosnia under sniper fire, or that she left the White House dirt poor. She lies for no reason too*; he’s just much more brazen, ignorant, and sloppy (not by much, though) about it.
*And, much like Trump, she lies about thing that are easily- very easily- fact checkable, which, just blows my mind.
I’ll grant you the Bosnia thing. I don’t think her saying she was “dead broke” was a lie, just a rich person being oblivious to what the word “broke” means.
It was a lie. She knows what broke means.
So many of these talking points require the view that Clinton is either out of touch or incompetent. You very well might be right… but that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement: “It’s not that she LIED, it’s that she’s had so much money for so long she’s lost all track of the meaning of what BROKE means.”
Wonderful.
She’s obviously an incompetent criminal, since she needs to be running for President and have the whole executive branch covering for her to avoid prosecution.
I doubt she would have been prosecuted for the e-mail thing even if she wasn’t running for president.
Impossible to say.
He might have been, but we didn’t have George Washington available and simply failed to nominate him. There is not a night and day difference between trump and kasich in terms of buffoonery. Maybe a night and late dusk difference.
To my knowledge Kasich has never done mocking imitations of handicapped reporters, pointed people toward sex tapes, made birther allegations or pretended to be his own publicist over the phone. He doesn’t talk about his penis in debates.
There is no comparison at all.
I am not sure who to believe anymore myself. But I wanted to know if you had seen this: https://www.catholics4trump.com/the-true-story-donald-trump-did-not-mock-a-reporters-disability/
I read it and it made sense to me. Given how inept he is it would hardly make a difference considering all his other failings. But it does make sense. Do you reject it?
I’ve seen it, and it is a Jumbo, denying what is obvious.
i think it was a good article. almost everyone including myself thought the “disability” was one which the guy spoke like donald does and was spastic. it wasn’t that at all. after reading that article i asked a bunch of people “what was the disability” and they all said the same as me.
not that it’s OK for him to mock everyone like that.. but i agree with the article that wasn’t what i think he was doing. (not that he wouldn’t) but that photo and dt’s photo, both the “same” is truly misleading to me.
the reporter speaks normally.
he mocked others that same way as well who don’t have a disability.
i’ve seen others do that too, mostly when someone is flustered or being panicky. (i could give links if needed to very sane people imitating someone being a bit “crazy” as far as panicking.)
i don’t think it was obvious! glad you asked jack cuz i wanted to!!
🙂
Nope. Trump was mocking his hand gestures, and insinuating that someone with a physical disability is also mentally handicapped. The article is pure rationalization. Many of the most famous and funniest impressions of all time involve funny speech pattern that are wildly exaggerated or just false versions of how the target really spoke. The claim that Trump wasn’t imitating the reporter makes as much sense as arguing that the imitaions of Edward G. Robinson that had hims saying “See?” every third word wasn’t supposed to be him because didn’t really talk like that.
And please start using caps. I don’t have time to go through a long post and fix them all, and it looks like crap. Unless you are e.e. cummings, which I doubt.
This points up an issue that I think is a *real one*. It is why I say ‘everyone is lying to me*. But I do not mean to imply that you are lying. Not at all.
But I was convinced, to the degree that I am convinced by anything, which is rarely absolute, that Trump’s gesticulations got spun and rephrased as An Evil. It fits with a general campaign to do exactly that.
And they keep piling them on.
All that I mean to say is that stories and ‘spin’ get so convoluted and twisted that at some point ‘truth’ is very difficult to discern. It requires a RESEARCH PROJECT to get to the real truth of contentious questions. And since one cannot devote oneself to unraveling each one, one is stuck in *uncertainty*.
The way that ‘people’ deal with this is, I think, to notice when someone seems to have a personal angle against someone else and then they choose to take the other side. It is child-like, I admit, but it does seem to go on like that.
PS: I have been reading ‘The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow’ and cannot for the literal life of me understand how you as Arch Ethicist can have anything but contempt for this man’s lack of ethics! ‘Ruthlessly logical defenses’???
He seems ruthlessly illogical and highly emotional.
Well, I am only into the second chapter. (I got a used copy that came from the Minnesota School of Business, Globe University. It does not say ‘Removed’ so I wonder if someone stole it and put it up for sale? 😉
Thanks for reading it! Darrow was as brilliant and complex as a human being can be. He was a revolutionary and a progressive who believed that the end justified the means, even if the means was terrorism. Still, he constructed his oral defenses perfectly. If Donald Trump could speak with the precision of Darrow, he’d take over the world,
LOL!!! That’s funny. I am not e.e. however I am a writer, songwriter, artist, screenwriter, producer… blah, blah, blah.
I will use caps because it’s your blog. I don’t like to use them because when I write, I like to let it flow out rather than take time to use caps. I do use them for professional letters, etc. I suppose it’s lazy. However I do like how it looks. Not sure why. Just started doing it some years ago, long story as to why.
I disagree on the mocking thing. Not a bit deal since I agree with you on everything else thus far. Thankfully. I’m tired of reading people who seem to just opine based on their “feelings” and “reactions” and agendas.
Wow, a post with proper caps and punctuation! 🙂 How’d I do, Jack?
Did this make it easier for you to read? 🙂
(made it harder for me to type!) *grumble. But again it’s YOUR blog, and I’m thankful for it! Truly.
Thanks. It looks a lot better. Think of this as a “broken window” episode.
only cuz i respect you, i comply 🙂 (And because I want to be able to keep posting.) Not sure what “broken window” means.
It is the urban theory that not repairing broken windows in abandoned houses gradually leads to increasing urban decay, as more and more is neglected because residents increasingly lose pride and attention to standards. This theory was applied by Giuliani in cleaning up Times Square. It applies to blogs too. More slang, more typos, more non standard English, bad grammar, punctuation…and eventually the comment neighborhood goes to hell.
You’re right that Machado ought to be a completely irrelevant woman whom nobody cares about. But it was not Trump who made her relevant. Clinton is the one who brought her to the debate and made an issue of her. And Clinton’s mouthpieces in the media are the ones who kept Machado on the front pages all week, trying to make people care deeply about her.
The NY Times ran at least 12 articles about Machado in the three days before Trump’s twitter storm. All of them treated the words allegedly spoken to her 20 years ago as a major story about Trump’s supposed fat-shaming, misogyny and racism. They brushed aside his denials that he had ever said those words and portrayed her as a courageous and sympathetic survivor rather than as the scandalous publicity hound of notorious bad character that she really is.
It’s also clear that much of the media, and particularly the NY Times, coordinated their coverage of Machado with the Clinton campaign both before and after the debate. They admit it. They’re proud of it. They planned in advance to make Machado into a major story, before Trump ever said a word about her.
And the whole story is essentially a lie.
In the first place, Machado didn’t just “gain more weight than Trump liked” when she was Miss Universe. She got fat. One CNN report at the time said that she had gained 27 pounds in 3 months. Another said that she gained 60 pounds in 9 months. She was a worldwide laughingstock, with newspapers in every nation running “Miss Piggy” headlines. If Trump was privately unkind to her about her weight, he was only saying what everybody else in the world was already saying. She should have been grateful that he didn’t fire her from her job, as he had a contractual right to do, and in fact he was good-humored and supportive of her publicly at the time.
Second, it is not true, as media coverage keeps saying, that Trump has had an obsessive “public beef” or “private grudge” for the past 20 years. He talked about the “fat Miss Universe” incident in one of his books, and he has told the story more than once. All of us tell stories about interesting, funny things that have happened in our lives, but repeating an anecdote is not the same as carrying on a feud.
Moreover, it is inaccurate to characterize Machado as a “private citizen who has criticized Trump” and is being cruelly “targeted for destruction.” She is a voluntary public figure who has spent the past week holding press conferences and making television appearances to make accusations against him. She is the one with the “beef” and the “grudge,” not Trump. Calling her a liar and pointing out that she has a long, well-publicized history of bad behavior is self-defense.
Third, her life has been filled with scandals of signature significance that make her a person unworthy of belief. She really was accused of driving the getaway car from a murder scene; the judge in the case really did accuse her publicly of threatening to have him killed; she really did consort openly with gangsters over a period of many years; and she really did have a child out of wedlock with a hit man and drug lord. (She has denied some of those accusations in the past, but they were made by prosecutors and judges and she seems to no longer bother denying them.)
Fourth, she really did make a sex tape. Or rather, she really did have sex in front of a camera on a reality TV show and really was recorded on video doing so. At least, that’s what newspapers across Latin America at the time reported was what had led her celebrity fiancé to dump her. (The NY Times pretends that there was no sex tape, making an absurd distinction between “having sex on video” and “making a sex tape.”) Trump’s pointing out her conduct is not “slut shaming.” Rather, Machado’s humiliating her fiancé by having sex with another man on international television is an act of signature significance bearing on her character and credibility in the current controversy of her own making.
If Trump were a better debater, he would have made Clinton look foolish and dishonest when she brought up Machado’s preposterous story in the debate. If the press were honest, they would have brushed aside the story, or put the focus where it should have been, on Clinton’s mendacity and bad judgment in promoting the tales of such a person. But once Trump’s campaign had done all it could to get the truth out, and the media had resolutely refused to report it, Trump should have had the good sense and self-control to accept that he had to stop talking about the matter, because anything he said would only give more ammunition to his enemies.
you make a LOT of good points. he’s still unfit though. it’s depressing that he and hillary are all we have to choose from. really depressing.
You’re right that Machado ought to be a completely irrelevant woman whom nobody cares about. But it was not Trump who made her relevant.
So???? Nobody cared, Greg. Nobody. It was a cheap shot at a best by Clinton, and an obscure one. Trump made it relevant because he freaked out and looked like an even bigger fool than usual. You can’t blame Clinton for Trump’s lack of self-control.
And Clinton’s mouthpieces in the media are the ones who kept Machado on the front pages all week, trying to make people care deeply about her.
Again, so what? If Trump had ignored them, Clinton would have looked bad. A smart man does ignore them. An adult ignored them. It was a trap for a fool, that only a fool could fall for.
The NY Times ran at least 12 articles about Machado in the three days before Trump’s twitter storm.
Yes, and the news media anti-Trump bias helps him, unless he acts like a moron. Which he did. Hurting himself, except for people like you, who can’t seem to grasp the simple fact that when a Presidential candidate acts like a deranged jerk, WHY isn’t important. What is important is that Presidents can’t be deranged jerks! You sound like obe of Trump’s pathetic surrogates. You do NOT want to do that.
All of them treated the words allegedly spoken to her 20 years ago as a major story about Trump’s supposed fat-shaming, misogyny and racism.
He did fat shame her. That was rude but fair at the time: a beauty queen has a contractual obligation to stay in shape. But it doesn’t matter now! At all.
It’s also clear that much of the media, and particularly the NY Times, coordinated their coverage of Machado with the Clinton campaign both before and after the debate.
ARRRGH!!! What is the matter with you? SO %$#@!!&*)&&$ WHAT? The fact that the news media is in the bag for Clinton doesn’t excuse Trump’s acting like a demented douche.
What is it you can’t understand about this? You are spinning. There is no excusing or mitigating his conduct.
You beat me to it!
Yeah, but you did it in fewer words, more calmly, and equally accurately.
Did you channel me for your second last paragraph? That feels like something I would say.
Actually, I am you, time-traveled back in time from the future. I can’t tell you why.
If everything you say is true (and I doubt that it is — I saw the “fat” video — she was not fat) it doesn’t matter. Yes, Trump was goaded — and he fell for it. Clinton’s team built up this story about a non-important person guessing what Trump would do. That man lives for revenge. He cannot be President.
Remember Paula Jones:
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/resources/1998/clinton.jones/characters.html
Did this disqualify Bill Clinton from being President? Maybe it should have, but the standard was abandoned and we can never apply it again in this context.
No single episode can compare to the full range of Trump’s outrages. That’s the context.
So what should Trump do?
Make that same comment James Carville made?
What??? What does Carville have to do with Trump? What does Clinton’s sexual assault proclivities have to do with a beauty queen has-been? What does any of have to do with judging Trump’s fitness to be President? Carville is professional troll and hired gun. Completely irrelevant.
Did his employers approve of his words.
Who was his employer?
He’s a permanent Clinton consultant/aide, like Lanny Davis.
Then his words can be imputed onto his employers.
Is James Carville someone you admire and want to emulate? If not then what does he have to do with this conversation?
It is not to justify what Trump said, nor to claim that it would be okay for Trump to say about Machado exactly what Carville said about Jones.
it is to point out that Carville’s words did not disqualify Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton remained popular. Feminist leaders did not call on Bill Clinton to fire Carville.
Trump should have had the good sense and self-control to accept that he had to stop talking about the matter
This is all you needed to write, and as I’m sure any person who cares for you would have told you, is all you should have written. But instead you felt the need to include a truly astounding and embarrassing litany of rationalizations beforehand. Why would you do this to yourself?
Because there is a considerable difference in tone and meaning between saying that he should have given up on a lost cause and stopped talking about it, as I did, and saying that he was unstable, boorish, low-life, demented, irredeemable, irresponsible and reckless for talking about it in the first place.
Obviously, the Clinton people set a trap and Trump fell into it. However, I think that people don’t correctly understand the workings of the trap, and I disagree fundamentally with Jack’s analysis of what this incident implies about Trump’s character.
The trap that Clinton set had three parts: First, it was a personal attack on Trump’s character. He always defends himself against personal attacks, especially when he thinks they impugn his honor. Second, it was false. The accusation that he had called Machado a “housekeeper” was implausible and he repeatedly denounced it as a lie. Third — and this is what made the trap so deadly — it was a lie told by a disreputable person who was wholly unworthy of belief. The falsity of Machado’s testimony, its implausibilty and her obvious untrustworthiness as a witness lured Trump into thinking that he could successfully defend himself against her charges.
Trump and many of his supporters thought he could turn the tables on Clinton by proving that she had given credence and publicity to a liar and borderline criminal, but they were outsmarted and outnumbered. They thought that if they revealed her sordid history, the press would report it and voters would reject her fabrications. But instead of backing off from Clinton’s narrative, the press reported that Trump was “smearing” the “victim,” insinuating that the smears were untrue, when actually her scandals were well-known around the world. By the end of the week, if not earlier, it had become clear that the press was never going to report the story honestly.
That is the point at which I say Trump should have given up. Instead, he apparently decided to make one last effort to punch through by tweeting directly to the public. I think that his tweets were fair commentary on Clinton and Machado. When I say that he did not show good sense and self-control, I mean that it was a mistake to continue a fight that could not be won, and that he should have restrained himself from sending out tweets that he should have known would be twisted against him by hostile media. His reference to the sex tape, in particular, could be used by the press to portray him as sex-obsessed and would enable them to recast the scandal about Machado’s out-of-wedlock child with a hit man and drug lord as a story about sex instead of a story about a gangster’s moll.
I agree that Trump made a mistake, and that it is one that he has made repeatedly. He should stop letting false accusations and vicious personal attacks get under his skin. He could have brushed Machado aside in the debate by saying, “She’s lying, and if you’ll just google her, you’ll see that she’s not a person you should believe.” The press would have reported the pro-Clinton story the next day anyway, Machado would have made the rounds for her powder-puff press conferences and TV interviews, but the story would have died by Thursday if Trump hadn’t risen to the bait. Instead, he allowed himself to be tricked.
But I think this is political amateurism and an understandable human frustration at the press’s refusal to fairly report the story. I don’t agree that any of it shows that he is unstable, boorish, low-life, demented, irredeemable, irresponsible, reckless, bizarre, deranged, narcissistic, mysogynistic, racist or vengeful. Everything that he and his supporters said about Machado was true, and I don’t think there was anything morally wrong about exposing her to public scrutiny in order to discredit the attacks that Clinton was using her to orchestrate against him. His reflexive tendency to defend himself angrily against dishonest personal attacks is a political weakness, not a character flaw.
Amazing, not only do you see nothing wrong with what Trump has said but you repeat his accusations as if they were the truth. Does it make you feel good to go around calling a woman a whore.
And I noticed your little line tossed in there about the media ignoring a bastard. I’d be interested to hear why you think it’s important to report on that or anything else in Machado’s sexual history.
The trap is simple. If Trump is mad at a woman he won’t say you’re bad at your job or you don’t understand the subject, instead he’ll use some variant of you’re a fat old ugly whore.* Trap sprung.
*I know you don’t understand why this is wrong since you happily repeat the accusations, so to put it in terms you might understand… Imagine you accused me of stealing your wallet. My reply is you have tiny hands and a small penis and everyone check out the gay for pay tape. So why isn’t the biased media reporting on your micro penis. Now it might be that all the things I said are true and people really should google it because you won’t even believe the stuff out there about this Greg guy. And on and on, but since it has nothing to do with your wallet I’d just look like a complete jackass making fun of some random guy’s mirco-penis because he dared disagree with me about something.
Presidents don’t do that.
Drop the shovel, Greg: you’re halfway to China. This isn’t a “mistake” because Trump does this kind of thing over and over, as with the Gold Star Muslim parents. Smart people learn from mistakes—first, they have to figure out it was a mistake, which isn’t hard.
Trump shows himself to be unstable in this disgraceful episode, because he show himself to be obsessed: 3 AM tweets? His text is boorish–it is rude and uncivil to allude to sex tapes.Only low-lifes behave like this. It is demented because Trump was gaining support, and most agreed it was because he had not had one of these eruptions since the conventions. So he has another one. Moron. He is irredeemable, because a President can’t attack simple citizens like this no matter what the provocation, and a candidate who doesn’t understand that is untrustworthy, forever. Obviously, this conduct is responsible: responsible candidates never behave like this. How can you say it isn’t Reckless? It’s an idiotic gamble, that anyone with a mind would know would backfire. Bizarre is the easiest of all: If I told you a year ago that a presidential candidate would sabotage himself by railing about a Venezuelan Miss USA from decades earlier, would you respond that this was a reasonable prediction, or a wacky one? For deranged, see demented above. This is the essense of narcissistic, because only narcissists are so convinced that they can do no wrong that it drives them crazy when they are criticized. Mysogynistic is obvious, and the entire episode shows how vengeful Trump is when he has been crossed.
No, there’s nothing racist about it. Good one.
Stop digging.
Remember Paula Jones.
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/women-struggling-to-reconcile-hillary-clintons-role-in-husbands-sex-scandals/
“Mysogynistic is obvious”
Absolutely. Any man who responds to a woman’s criticism by saying “check out her sex tape” is a misogynist, and anyone who doesn’t see that needs to question their own attitudes toward women.
(It’s also hypocritical given Trump’s own cameo in a soft-core porn video, his wife’s nude girl-on-girl photos, and his serial adultery. But in Trump’s world, only women should be judged for their sexual choices.)
So was James Carville misogynist?
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/women-struggling-to-reconcile-hillary-clintons-role-in-husbands-sex-scandals/
James Carville, a longtime strategist for Bill Clinton, was especially cutting in attacking Flowers. “If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find,” Carville said of Flowers.
I’d say this comment is much more classist than it is misogynistic, but really, it’s a bit of both.
It’s also not remotely comparable to telling Americans to “check out her sex tape.”
You’ve said this a couple times… That it’s obviously sexist to point out her sex tape. It’s a shitty thing to do… It’s a stupid thing to do…. But does anyone here honestly think that if this were a man attacking Trump and he had an embarrassing sex tape on the market Trump wouldn’t say the same?
And having said that, I’m just going to go chug some bleach. This election cycle… Really.
You’ve said this a couple times… That it’s obviously sexist to point out her sex tape. It’s a shitty thing to do… It’s a stupid thing to do…. But does anyone here honestly think that if this were a man attacking Trump and he had an embarrassing sex tape on the market Trump wouldn’t say the same?
Well, first off, it’s not really a “sex tape.” As far as I understand it, Machado is under the covers with a guy on a reality show–we don’t know if they were making out or having sex. It strikes me as a bit over-the-top to call it a sex tape. Second, women are judged for this kind of thing much more harshly than a man would be, and I have no doubt the harassment and threats she’s getting as a result of Trump’s attack are very different from what a man would get. Finally, if one’s reaction to being called a misogynist is to say “Check out her sex tape,” one is pretty much proving the point.
If he fell for this trap, what will he fall for as president that will put our entire country at stake?
His “political weakness” in your terms, will follow him wherever he goes. And if God Forbid that’s into the presidency, and someone mocks him as “The Stupidest President We Have Ever Had”, what’s he gonna do when he falls in THAT trap to defend himself? Nuke them at 3am????????
Shows NO restraint, wisdom or accountability. A good leader would say, “hey I got a problem with reacting, here’s my TWITTER PASSWORD! DON’T LET ME USE IT TIL I CALM DOWN!”
He seems clueless… and dang it… I wish it weren’t so. I detest Hillary.
A recent conversation my wife and I had in the car:
Wife: Trump is an asshole. He just says whatever comes to his mind without thinking about it at all.
Me: That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s an asshole. K. never thought about what she said before she said it and I wouldn’t call her an asshole.
(K. was an elderly challenged individual I helped take care of as part of a position I held for two years. She had absolutely zero mind to mouth filter.)
Wife: And do you think Kathy should be president?
Me: I’d vote for her before I’d vote for Trump.
The sad part is I haven’t yet decided whether I was being sarcastic or not.
Just remember – all but a handful of senior GOP politicians support Trump, and do so in public, unashamedly.
That should give you furiously to think.
The handful exist though, despite very significant political pressure from the vast majority. Diogenes wouldn’t have to search too long. So no, they’re not all like that. It’s not systemic in a partizan sense. It’s possible to be both Republican and have at least an iota of common decency, integrity, and sanity.
It’s much the same with US Evangelicals. They’re even more enthused about Trump in the main, but there are a few very senior and respected figures who are horrified and bewildered that their movement is backing him. Apparently some actually practice what they preach.
Gullible Authoritarians who need a Strong Leader, leveaned with a number of subclinically psychotic paranoids, those are the groups Trump speaks to.
Ok, and the terminally thick, posssibly. I see so many of those on the Left though that I’m not convinced.
Clinton has two points in her favour – experience, much as senior figures in organised crime have proven organisational abilities and are good decision makers in a crisis – and another that clinches the deal. She’s not Donald Trump. The latter is the more important of the two.
This is all fine of course. But it has also become ‘stating the obvious’. I think another level of analysis is needed yet I cannot be sure what it should be. I have been reading CG Jung’s ‘Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies’ (it is really very interesting analysis of the psychic factor in Mass Visions). It has to do with social psychology. With projection. With ‘unconscious factors’. And this is where your topical analysis, in my view, fails.
You and Jack and the entire NY intellectual establishment can dissect Donald Trump, divide up his entrails and hang his head on a pike, but you do not seem to get to the core of the phenomenon somehow.
What is it?
Something radical, mysterious, dangerous and playful all at once; something irate, intolerant, ‘smug’, and disrupting has jumped out and is dominating social consciousness. It is in some senses: a wounded man (Trump as the disfigured social-climber, the brunt of 2 generations of distainful, ridiculing cuts)(from what I have gathered in the NY papers archived). He is a form of revenge and rage that rises up out of the social body. He then comes to represent a force which laughs when it is accused of being an EVIL beyong all EVIL. He laughs and Pepe the Froggy dances and winks if you catch my drift.
(The penis thing also is totally a part of it). It would be impossible to say that it does not have to do with a wounded masculinity. But the thing is it is a mistake, psychologically, to ridicule that. Better to understand ‘what is speaking’.)
If the US Political Establishment does not get clear about what is there in the population clamoring for ‘recognition’ then political careers will come crashing to an end.
There is a great deal more that can be pulled to the surface for ‘conscious examination’. The Media seems to represent ‘conscious attitude’ but ‘the people’ and every subverting effort (and they are substantial and constant) seems to represent an ‘unconscious message’.
Is this my analysis — my suggestions — too woo-woo? Too outrageous?
I completely understand the phenomenon. Understanding it does not justify it. I don’t care, at this point, “why” people are supporting an incompetent fool. The point is, they are. This is the same silly argument I kept fighting after the Zimmerman verdict. People, including Obama, kept excusing those who were angry about the verdict, saying that we had to understand how they saw it. But understanding why they were expressing an ignorant and legally outrageous position didn’t excuse it. I understand completely what created the KKK—that doesn’t mean I have to be sympathetic to it. I’m really sick of that kind of logic. Yes, I get it, stupid people think they were ignored, exploited and taken for granted, and they were. And this kind of traction—choosing a moron as their champion—explains why they were ignored.
Hobbit …
Oh but I do not think in terms of ‘justification’. I only try to *understand what really is happening* and I think this is a most difficult task. It requires a Hobit’s Journey and even some magical implements like ‘Elvin Rope. (A silly joke, pay no mind).
After one understands the phenomenon, if one can, and understanding social-psychological phenomenon is a subjective area, but still I think it does point to certain meanings. I don’t know quite how to put it and I struggle to. If one accepts the social psychological proposition, and if something is ‘unconscious’ that needs to come to the surface and be dealt with ‘consciously’, what is it?
Now, no one seems to, has to, accept any of my arguments and propositions, but I think that what is coming to the surface is ‘denied inner sentiment’. If one wanted to push my analysis, and also Jung’s analysis (a problematic one and hard to employ it in politics!), you would have to make Trump the subject of a massive social projection. And one would HAVE to make the comparison to former times and the rise of the Authoritarian Fascists.
While I can understand why you get ‘sick of the logic’ of justification, one major issue here is quite simply: the Republic was designed, was it not? to have internal controls against the rise and the influence of the incompetent mass-man. One whole purpose was to keep that man at bay.
But that man is now allowed far too much access. It is the mercantile system that allows it. His ‘opinion’ is sought at every turn. The business world, and the political world, bend to his insane will.
I read an Orwell essay on Ghandi and he said ‘The little man makes an utterance and Empires tremble’ (I paraphrase. Now, this man of the mass Tweets and the whole structure shakes.
In accord with your training and background the only people who will understand you are those who were really directed to run the Republic. It IS an elite conservatism you recommend.
But now that I have arrived at that understanding I have to ask: How did they fail? Because it stands to reason that some failure has occurred/is occuring.
Can you direct me to what you see as ‘the failure’? (If indeed you see things in any sense as I have been explaining).
You wrote: “Darrow was as brilliant and complex as a human being can be. He was a revolutionary and a progressive who believed that the end justified the means, even if the means was terrorism.”
This is perhaps some part of what I feel a need to get at. I have only read the first 2 chapters but I can see that this man is a radical. But I would suggest that it is just this sort of ‘man’ (mind, attitude, modus) that could be said to be one factor which is harming the Republic.
I do not know if you are saying that you admire such a modus operandi or if you think it needs to be controlled?
Would it be possible to make any comparison between a man like Darrow and a man like Trump? (I do not mean in particulars either). I assume you know what I mean: the ends justify the means as it were?
1. He was a man of his time. He practiced law before there were formal ethics rules, and he was a lawyer to exact social change, not a lawyer because he admired the law.
2. Sure he was a radical. I don’t have to agree with someone to admire them. Darrow was dedicated to justice, but had an extreme view of justice: he believes all power was inherently abusive, and believed that the poor, weak and stupid were treated cruelly. he did not accept the principle of personal responsibility, because he believed individuals were trapped by the circumstances of their birth, and only a remarkable few—like him—could overcome such disadvantages.
That much I picked up in the first chapter. He also took all agency away from them, a rather troubling proposition. Hard determinism I guess.
He’d have made a good Leninist. 😉
Naturally, what I noticed right off is that all his predicates differ substantially from my own.
Is there a 3) 4) and 5)?
John Podhoretz tweeted, “Hillary on Machado is Judge Doom tapping ‘shave and a haircut’ on the wall. Like Roger Rabbit, Trump had to burst out and shout ‘two bits’!”
Perfect. I would probably vote for Roger Rabbit over Donald Trump. It’s close.