I tuned into the first round of the shitshow a couple times very briefly during South Park and Full Frontal commercial breaks, but really, there's no point, is there? Who actually watches these things, much less attends them? At best, it's something to do for the elderly, like watching Lawrence Welk reruns on PBS. If anything, it mostly seems like an activity for the mentally deficient.
Which brings us to the media commentary. Because they are inept thinkers, and sincerely believe that maintaining a face of studious "objectivity" in the face of a monster is the central mission of their job, they pounced on a few dozen clearly plagiarized words. This will be their bright shiny objet du jour, and it will come at the expense of any useful reportage or analysis.
First of all, it might be more useful to take a second and qualitatively analyze the substance of those poached words. Having the phrases "your word is your bond" and "you treat people with respect" coming from the spouse of someone who notoriously does neither should be a topic for discussion, but no, they would rather fixate on side-by-side comparisons and coax meaningless denials and demurrals from Drumpf's amateur campaign treehouse.
Secondly, Melania Drumpf's speech, regardless of who wrote or copy-pasted it, came at the end of what can only be characterized as an evening of toxic, corrosive nonsense, in the service of a toxic, corrosive candidate. These people have no souls. It is nothing to them to grief-pimp victims, and use them and their tragic stories as props, fuel for the lies baked into their noxious platform.
This is not a small thing; in fact, it is their central thesis, that Preznit Chocolate Thunder (PCT) has turned our holy nation, handed to us direckly by Jebus hisse'f, into a flaming hellscape. To add insult to injury, PCT has also (since he's a sekrit Moooslim, doncha know) encouraged, enabled, and/or materially assisted (depending on which of these lowbrow mutants is nattering at any given moment) ISIS, the lone-wolf Islamic jihadi gunmen, and the lone-wolf BLM cop-killers, which makes you wonder how PCT finds any time to kill puppies and talk shit about whitey.
The preamble to the GOP platform states in part: This platform is optimistic because the American people are optimistic. [emphasis added]
It might have helped if someone had told that to the enraged buffoons bloviating over one another last night. From Rudy "You still here?" Giuliani to one of the Dork Dynasty dopes to fuckin' Chachi, this was a cavalcade of haterade-spewing has-beens and never-weres, each jockeying for a position on Cheetolini's love missile. I assume Gary Busey was either unavailable, or just had the good sense to decline. Who the fuck is Antonio Sabato, anyway? Some reality-teevee loser, I assume.
There is no optimism in these people, nor even true pessimism or realism. They do not have any solutions, or even rigorous skepticism, just hate and complaints. It is pure nihilism, the sort of nihilism that lurks in every serial killer who finally breaks out of his fantasy interior world and starts causing real damage.
For all intents and purposes, the GOP as presented at its convention is essentially a death cult. It collectively berates the rather glaring instances of dishonesty and ineptitude in the opposition, while ignoring the routine dishonesty and ineptitude -- from the stupidly small (things not even worth lying about) to the very large (you know, he is on trial for fraud right now, and you can read many of the deposition docs for yourself) -- of its own candidate. The people who comprise this cult are transparently cynical and hypocritical, well beyond the degree which one usually expects and either ignores or accepts in a politician.
It didn't have to be this way. Economic insecurity is a very real thing -- a new word had to be coined to describe the burgeoning class of people who have reaped none of the benefits of the so-called economic recovery. Wealth and income inequality in the US rivals those of banana republics, half-assed countries like Brazil and Mexico. There is no excuse for this, and it needs not only to be discussed, it should be a cornerstone of both parties' platforms.
If enough people were doing even a little better economically, a great many of your social ills and racial tensions would start to resolve very quickly. People become saner and more responsible when they actually have a stake, a vested interest, a future to look forward to rather than a gradual, inexorable decline.
But since both parties exist mostly to legitimize the forcible extraction of currency from your wallet and labor from your soul, and since the GOP has lost its collective mind and now only communicates through the coarsest teabagger jargon and booga-booga emojis, this is what you get -- an entire night of rage and fear-mongering and loose allegations of treasonous conduct, lobbed by some of the most intellectually dishonest people imaginable. And more to come.
And the media will yammer collectively about Melania Drumpf's "plagiarism" because it fits their horserace narrative, and absolves them of the need to do or say anything meaningful.
I've said before that we need and deserve a better media, but if we keep tuning in to this nonsense, maybe we do deserve them.
Which brings us to the media commentary. Because they are inept thinkers, and sincerely believe that maintaining a face of studious "objectivity" in the face of a monster is the central mission of their job, they pounced on a few dozen clearly plagiarized words. This will be their bright shiny objet du jour, and it will come at the expense of any useful reportage or analysis.
First of all, it might be more useful to take a second and qualitatively analyze the substance of those poached words. Having the phrases "your word is your bond" and "you treat people with respect" coming from the spouse of someone who notoriously does neither should be a topic for discussion, but no, they would rather fixate on side-by-side comparisons and coax meaningless denials and demurrals from Drumpf's amateur campaign treehouse.
Secondly, Melania Drumpf's speech, regardless of who wrote or copy-pasted it, came at the end of what can only be characterized as an evening of toxic, corrosive nonsense, in the service of a toxic, corrosive candidate. These people have no souls. It is nothing to them to grief-pimp victims, and use them and their tragic stories as props, fuel for the lies baked into their noxious platform.
This is not a small thing; in fact, it is their central thesis, that Preznit Chocolate Thunder (PCT) has turned our holy nation, handed to us direckly by Jebus hisse'f, into a flaming hellscape. To add insult to injury, PCT has also (since he's a sekrit Moooslim, doncha know) encouraged, enabled, and/or materially assisted (depending on which of these lowbrow mutants is nattering at any given moment) ISIS, the lone-wolf Islamic jihadi gunmen, and the lone-wolf BLM cop-killers, which makes you wonder how PCT finds any time to kill puppies and talk shit about whitey.
The preamble to the GOP platform states in part: This platform is optimistic because the American people are optimistic. [emphasis added]
It might have helped if someone had told that to the enraged buffoons bloviating over one another last night. From Rudy "You still here?" Giuliani to one of the Dork Dynasty dopes to fuckin' Chachi, this was a cavalcade of haterade-spewing has-beens and never-weres, each jockeying for a position on Cheetolini's love missile. I assume Gary Busey was either unavailable, or just had the good sense to decline. Who the fuck is Antonio Sabato, anyway? Some reality-teevee loser, I assume.
There is no optimism in these people, nor even true pessimism or realism. They do not have any solutions, or even rigorous skepticism, just hate and complaints. It is pure nihilism, the sort of nihilism that lurks in every serial killer who finally breaks out of his fantasy interior world and starts causing real damage.
For all intents and purposes, the GOP as presented at its convention is essentially a death cult. It collectively berates the rather glaring instances of dishonesty and ineptitude in the opposition, while ignoring the routine dishonesty and ineptitude -- from the stupidly small (things not even worth lying about) to the very large (you know, he is on trial for fraud right now, and you can read many of the deposition docs for yourself) -- of its own candidate. The people who comprise this cult are transparently cynical and hypocritical, well beyond the degree which one usually expects and either ignores or accepts in a politician.
It didn't have to be this way. Economic insecurity is a very real thing -- a new word had to be coined to describe the burgeoning class of people who have reaped none of the benefits of the so-called economic recovery. Wealth and income inequality in the US rivals those of banana republics, half-assed countries like Brazil and Mexico. There is no excuse for this, and it needs not only to be discussed, it should be a cornerstone of both parties' platforms.
If enough people were doing even a little better economically, a great many of your social ills and racial tensions would start to resolve very quickly. People become saner and more responsible when they actually have a stake, a vested interest, a future to look forward to rather than a gradual, inexorable decline.
But since both parties exist mostly to legitimize the forcible extraction of currency from your wallet and labor from your soul, and since the GOP has lost its collective mind and now only communicates through the coarsest teabagger jargon and booga-booga emojis, this is what you get -- an entire night of rage and fear-mongering and loose allegations of treasonous conduct, lobbed by some of the most intellectually dishonest people imaginable. And more to come.
And the media will yammer collectively about Melania Drumpf's "plagiarism" because it fits their horserace narrative, and absolves them of the need to do or say anything meaningful.
I've said before that we need and deserve a better media, but if we keep tuning in to this nonsense, maybe we do deserve them.
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