Here we go again. It's 2020 all over again, with just a hint of 2016. Presidential-election politics, and Donald Trump especially, has become an astonishingly-sharp Shiri's scissor.
If you're much of an online person and you have a wide-enough circle of friends -- or you just can't keep yourself from reading the comments* -- you've seen it already in the reaction to last night's CNN "Town Hall." People critical of Mr. Trump were horrified, many of them citing his mockery of E. Jean Carroll, which elicited laughter from the largely-GOP audience. And on the other side? The laughing audience. (She's a Hoosier, by the way.)
Depending on your personal filter, which side of the "scissor statement" you're on, it was utterly awful or an absolute lark. There's not much "meh."
One side of the equation tells me the CNN event showed the man as he is: crass, sexist, racist and ignorant, and who'd want that? The other side reports their guy was back in the saddle again, and they're thrilled to see it. The man incites the worst attack on the U. S. Capitol since the War of 1812, undermines the foundations of our system of government, and gets cheered for it.
I don't get it -- well, I suppose I do; there's an element in the human heart that loves destruction and loathes whatever stands through storm, fire and centuries, just as there is an element that builds and preserves. Sometimes the thirst for wrack and ruin wins out; to a bored and well-fed people, it looks like fun. You can tell them it isn't, but until they've got to dig through garbage for food and use a shellhole in the back yard for a bathroom, they'll cheer it on nevertheless. Some will keep on cheering it on after things fall apart. (And heavens help us if the current debt-ceiling brinkmanship goes sour; take that sated, destruction-hungry audience, stick 'em in a depression or deep-enough recession, and they'll vote to flip over the tables out of sheer spite.)
In 2024, which will triumph, Constitutional order or autocracy? Snip, snip.
______________________________
* Never read the comments.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
5 comments:
I don't read what a local columnist calls the "HCS", for "human comments section." They're really low on the signal-to-noise scale.
I didn't watch the show, and it *was* a show. I tired of the Trump circus act long ago and really don't think he will be the Republican nominee. That's not to say he wouldn't mount a 3rd party candidacy to keep another Republican from the White House (as Perot kept Bush Sr. from re-election in 1992) for revenge. I think his ego just won't let him return to a "normal" life.
The article that you linked on Shiri's Scissor was of daunting length, but absorbing.
Cop Car, it is -- as far as we know -- a fictional narrative. But the core concept strikes close to home, doesn't it?
Yes. It had taken me a minute to scratch my head and register it as fiction - but I finished the whole thing.
Post a Comment