Last night's Republican convention drew heavily (not plagiarized, as Melania Trump's speech) from "The Hunger Games": the 2012 dystopian sci-fi film that must be looped into Donald Trump's home theater: hu-uge and maybe even the greatest movie ever made.
The Cleveland audience was eager to be ginned up. Their upturned faces were filled with grievance, anger, and conviction. The early speakers were drawn from characters harmed in real life. Policy? Where America is headed? That is a void filled by fear mongering and awe.
In "Hunger Games", the hero navigates a series of deadly challenges that pit character and strength, good versus evil, while an audience watches an intimate video of battlefield simulacrums. Survival is a test, we all know! The games are supervised by a political cult savvy to the attractions of the colosseum. The masses need entertainments, diversion and distractions.
That's what it felt like to watch the Republican convention in Cleveland last night. "Hunger Games" brought to life.
One has to admire Donald Trump's huge success in overlaying a reality television template on Republican Party canards. It got him pretty darn far.
Trump found the lowest common denominator of conservatism with the unerring accuracy of a diviner holding a fork branch to PT Barnum's gold. America's 19th circus impresario, Barnum was also a successful politician. Trump wiped out his competition -- low-energy Jeb Bush, small Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Chris Christie and the rest because substance is for losers, and he guessed -- correctly it turned out -- that even Republican voters are sick and tired of what passes for substance in their own political party.
With Trump, beyond the bluster, there is nothing but empty space. It is how he did business and how he does politics. Everything will be decided later when he gets to sit down across the table with the Mexicans and the Chinese. Trust me, shit is even worse than Fox News says it is.
The Trump convention began the same day that the inter web lit with rumors of the imminent departure from Fox News of its long-time chief; Roger Ailes.
If Trump is our generation's PT Barnum, Ailes is the Wizard in the "Wizard of Oz". But malicious. The network has made billions for the Murdoch family empire by exploiting human frailties and weakness. Trump is the purest distillation of Fox in its appeal to anger, grievances of history, distortion of fact and the "everything is bad" faction of the Republican Party.
The convictions and certainties that Ailes crafted through his programming and TV personalities, are similarly built on bluster, conspiracies, and a willingness to bind truth to single-step epoxy of corporate profits. "Fair and Balanced" has been a hu-uuge success, maybe the greatest in the history of mankind.
Lee Atwater -- the progenitor of modern GOP politics and late mentor to Roger Ailes -- promoted the idea of the GOP "Big Tent" in the run-up to Ronald Reagan, of inclusiveness and respect to diversity but he knew it all to be a lie; the same big tent PT Barnum used to lure 19th century circus-goers and the same lie as the cult leaders in "Hunger Games".
As a meme for the Republican Party, "Hunger Games" will have a short shelf life. The world need not worry. There are enough Trump supporters to fill an auditorium in Cleveland, but the Republican Party can't sell fiction to a majority of American voters. Some day perhaps, but like the good ole boys say, "This dog will not hunt." Not in 2016.
9 comments:
Negative. The Republicans were so negative. They are depressing. They have no solutions. They just criticize.
We are all looking for the details. Exactly how does he intend to create all these jobs? The lack of specificity on all dimensions is killing him with many people. But as we know, there are some who blindly trust him to create them some how. A lot of people were impressed by the smoke. Maybe the mirrors will appear before the convention is over.
The bigger picture is that a candidate is challenging the system that is broken. HRC represents that broken system and it is clearly broken when the DOJ says it's perfectly fine to lie under oath. When a sitting President is wrong on so many issues, when a GOP majority in the legislature can't get a handle on who it is supposed to be working for. When the supreme court hasn't a clue we are screwed. Time to start over. The current trend of both parties not agreeing on anything can't continue.
They are all prostiticians when it comes down to it. Trump just may be less of one. Time will tell.
Well, I am going to start getting my little cash together. If they put Trump in office, a lot of these people with houses and jobs will lose them. If you have cash, you will be able to buy tons of property for pennies on the dollar. They will remember how good they had it when Obama was there.
And if you think the system is broke now, just wait until you have to live with a dictator with mental illness.
Trump uses accurate words that are glossed over as his personality. He said in the 60 Minutes interview, "I'll have unbelievable security." He's not being larger than life, he is actually telling us what he says isn't true. Reporters and the public let him outright say broad statements of nothing and let him dodge.
The problem is the job that he is running for does not deal with broad generalities. It is mostly details and specifity with everything happening on paper first, then followed by lots of analysis, discussion, consultation with others from vasious prespectives, then decision and action follows. For people to vote for him based on very little information is shocking. He is the nominee yet we know very little about his real agenda. The things that he has revealed would destroy this economy, and push the world back many years. The republicans have allowed this to happen. As soon as he begins to send his bills over there, and they turn them down, he will use his presidential powers to clean them all out, and replace them with his people. It would be a major change for us and the world. Too much power to give to someone we know nothing about. And what we know is awful.
I like Donald Trump..
Why not mention "Lock Her Up" Hillery and her misgivings?
Let's give equal treatment
Not only do we know little about his proposed policies, what we do know will hurt us and the world. Importantly, there are NO checks on his power. He doesn't owe anyone anything. So he can do whatever he wants to do pretty much unchecked for four years. Either they bow down to his wishes in Congress, or he will take them out in two years, if not sooner. They will be replaced with Trumpian congressional "yes" people. He is a threat to the republic if elected. How could the republicans allow this?
Post a Comment