So at first, I'm thinking - well now, that'd make a pretty good meme; maybe something like: "Next time my kids bitch about their hard-ass math teacher..." -- or -- "All I've ever asked you to do around here is to clean up your room once in a while" But fuck that, cuz fuck me for not trying to think a bit past my own little corner of the world, which is still pretty well insulated from what seems like a bigger and bigger piece of the world that looks more and more fucked up practically every day. I'm still gonna make my silly jokes, but I'll be trying to widen the horizon a little. It actually gets harder to ensure the survival of the species if we insist on never looking beyond, "it could be much worse for us, so be glad it's them".
I don't want to discount the real dangers of The Trumpenstein Monster. Weirder things have happened in politics all over the world for a very long time.
But I want to make a coupla points.
First, even though Trump has a "commanding lead", he's still polling below 50% (mostly), which is half of the 30-40% of the rabidly nutty wingnuts in the GOP, which still adds up to about 20% of the total electorate.
But second - and here's the kicker - the GOP has spent a lot of time effort and money putting in place mechanisms intended (IMO) to shift political power towards minority control.
eg: Only about 30% of Americans favor tight restrictions on abortion, but according to Gutmacher, 80% of the states have passed laws aimed at putting abortion out of reach for many women, and/or banning most abortions in one way or another.
How many legitimate voters will be turned away in November because of Voter ID and continuing efforts to scrub the registration rolls?
When a sizable majority of votes cast nationally are votes for Democratic candidates (Mid-Terms 2014), but we still have a GOP majority in both houses of congress, and GOP majorities at the state and local levels, something's amiss.
So, it's not just the rhetoric and bombast that "conservatives" have been playing with for 35 years that created this Trump Problem. We have to put that together with the nuts and bolts of a political organization built to make a "majority" out of about 48% of the votes by whipping the army of rubes into a rich creamy lather and pointing them at a variety of phantom enemies in order to drive them out to the polls each time.
Trump's no dummy. He saw that nobody's really in charge way back in 2011. Remember, part of the deal with authoritarianism (supported by an apologist army of corporate Press Poodles) is that when things blow up or fall apart, "there's plenty of blame to go around"; "mistakes were made"; "let's not start pointing fingers" etc. The first order of business is to make sure nobody can be held accountable for anything, so the party faithful are just milling about in an amorphous blob looking for somebody to help them channel their anger at having been played for such suckers for such a long time. Trump just stepped in to fill the void.
Or more accurately, Trump is pretending to fill that void - if you notice, he's taking no responsibility for the shit he's throwing into the fan.
So what happens when this little pipe dream disappears with the morning fog, and along about midnight on the first Tuesday in November, the rubes are thinking they've been left just standing there with their dicks in their hands - again?
The "wise gray heads" of the GOP are up late every night. Worried, certainly - but as per usual, they're indulging themselves in a cynical exercise of trying to flip it back around so they don't have to admit to being wrong about almost everything.
Lets' review: They don't think the problem is the fact that they've effectively killed off one of the major political parties that just happens to be essential to a healthy democracy. They think the real problem is that they might have to accept the blame for killing it off. This is up to you guys, GOP gurus. First you address it, then you fix it, and then Sepuku, motherfucker. We'll miss ya, but we'll all be better off without ya.
Well, at least we're back to having Drumpf right smack in the middle again. The stage craft and show biz crap is just crazy stoopid obvious. And there's great promise for lots more because of the drama of the GOP elders wanting so desperately to keep Trump out of their club, that the worst-kept secret in politics now is that they'll run a 3rd party candidate against him just to make sure they lose. And won't that be fun? And to be sure, let me say that one part again: The GOP is taking steps to make sure their presumptive candidate loses the general election in November. They have to find somebody to run against Trump, but then run the campaign in a way that doesn't smack of panic, so it generates enough turnout that they get the down-ballot support they need to stave off some potentially humungous Dem gains in House and Senate seats, as well as all the little stuff like state houses and governorships. And they have to stake out their territory and try to reclaim the tiny bits of GOP that can still be pieced back together so it looks more or less like a political party again; which is a herculean task that this GOP has been trying very hard to countervail for the last 20 years. So if that Grand Unifier exists - maybe Rubio can collect a few more paychecks after all - just who the hell is he? Her? I don't like making sweeping predictions and pimping some circumstance or another as so totally dire that there's nothing but disaster ahead, but dang - this looks pretty damned dire, dude. So, Trump's done it (almost anyway) - he's practically pulled off a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. And we've still got 5 months of televised circle jerk to go before Cleveland. Woohoo.
So, Dems - how's that party unity thing going for you guys? The next 2 months or so, it's going to be kind of important to get people out of the house and into the streets to move voters out to the polls during the primaries, so you have some organization in place for the general. You know that, of course, but it seems like this is the kind of near-freebie you guys have made a habit of screwin'-the-pooch on. So here it is. This is your shot. Quit fuckin' around and go do it.
Slag her all ya want, guys. She's earned it. And she knows she's earned it. And she's proud of having earned it. For 25 years, she's been taking the training to do exactly that, at exactly that moment. Limbaugh, Coulter, Boortz, Savage, Cavuto - they've been teaching her that what really matters is to make "The Libruls" mad. That's the only test. If "The Libruls" get pissed off, then you're on the right track. Do anything, say anything - it doesn't even have to make sense cuz making sense is what "The Libruls" try to do. So just come out with whatever you find when you unpack all that weird shit way down deep in the lizard part of your brain (which, of course, you're absolutely sure isn't even there); now say it. And watch "The Libruls" gag. And you'll know you're right. Try it. It's easy. Somebody needs to start a betting pool on when the lid comes off this motherfucker, and we get our first real donnybrook / fracas / melee / gunfight whatever. I'm taking sometime before midnight on March 31. And with apologies to Gil Scott Heron, this little dance party is gonna be on everything that even remotely resembles a TV screen.
