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Wednesday, June 15, 2016
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Aftermath Of Orlando Terror Attack Shows That Political Correctness Is
Alive & Well In America
The Fort Hood terrorist attack was seven years ago. It took place on November 5th, 2009. It is now June of 2016. And it's clear from viewing the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub attack in Orlando, Florida that political correctness is still alive and well in this country. It's not that Americans haven't learned the lesson of Ft. Hood. It's that under our present 'leadership', we're not allowed to APPLY those lessons. Recall the news stories after the Ft. Hood shooting in which military psychiatrists and doctors present for Nidal Hasan's slideshow presentation which they were to grade to determine if he would be promoted to Major, became so concerned about what he was displaying to them that they huddled outside afterwards to discuss amongst themselves if he was NUTS.
Protests were sent up the chain. Hasan was promoted to Major ANYWAY. And about two years later, this openly radicalized Muslim shot 14 fellow US soldiers to death. Why was nothing done? More than one person who watched Hasan's rise in the US Military has opined it was very likely because Hasan was a MUSLIM & top brass didn't want to appear to be racist or profiling.
THIS is the slideshow that Hasan presented to a group of military professional doctors to grade to see if he would be promoted to Major. Note the numerous misspellings, the incoherence of it, and the fact when it was over his colleagues were questioning his sanity.
Note the comment on slide 48: "We love death more then [sic] you love life!" This guy could barely write legible English. Yet he was promoted to Army Major AFTER making this presentation.
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Mark Steyn recounted the numerous red flags that were ignored before Ft. Hood because, well, Hassan was Muslim. Nobody wanted to appear racist....so nothing was done.
Mateen was considered enough of a threat that he was interviewed by the FBI multiple times, but was then cleared. He was also briefly placed on the no-fly watch list, but was taken off that list in 2014. He passed two federal background checks to buy the weapons he used to kill 49 people.
As I said the other day on Twitter:
"Since the creep worked for a federal gov't affiliated agency, had a firearm license, passed 2 background checks, was interviewed multiple times by FBI & passed, then was taken off the terror watch list.....those who want to exploit this terror attack to move the ball on gun control literally have nowhere to go but straight for a ban on guns - or at least of the AR-15."
We've watched the Progressive Left try to take this terror attack and change the subject to Christian bigotry over SSM, trans bathrooms, the NRA, gun control, banning AR-15 rifles, ANYTHING except the real subject we need to be talking about right now.
Obama & Progressives are locked into their ideology. They won't change it, no matter what happens. And their response to the Orlando terror attack reaffirms this.
They are using Political Correctness to try to force the political changes they want to see while also forcing the other side of this discussion into silence.
THISis how we ended up with Trump. People tired of this bullshit responded to his anti-PC rantings. And now from Obama's gun control talk and the usual bashing of Christians & the NRA, the same scenario is playing out again. We still can't discuss the real problem because politically correct leadership in our government and our media simply WILL NOT LET THE NATIONAL DISCUSSION GO THERE.
Trump is NOT the answer to this, but if you want to understand his rise, what's sustained him for a year, the way the Left has responded to the Orlando terrorist attack is a PRIME example. Trump has tapped into this anger/helplessness in the face of PC nonsense that many Americans feel in a way that no one else ever has.
How many more Americans have to die before we finally quit catering to this PC stupidity?
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Victory Dance!
Why Are Obama Administration Officials Suddenly Giving Interviews In Which They Brag About How They Punk'd The Country On ObamaCare, The Iran Deal?
They are following the lead of Obama himself, who's made it clear his last year will be one long sustained victory dance, from deliberately posing in front of a massive image of Che' in his Cuba visit, to dancing the tango in Argentina. If Obama comes across as detached from his job the first few months of 2016, it's because he is. As Stephen Miller has pointed out in a running joke on his Twitter feed [@redsteeze], the country is now being run by 'President Ash Carter', our Secretary of Defense, who attends to mundane things like national security issues & dealing with foreign crises while Obama contents himself with hobnobbing with celebrities like Macklemore at 1 party after another between golf outings. Now plenty of Obama administration officials want in on this victory dance, and are giving interviews in which they seek credit for their manifest accomplishments before the clock runs out and they must exit the White House.
"Great job fooling the people, guys! Keep up the good work!"
Thus, we end up with Ben Rhodes in NY Mag, bragging in explicit detail about how he conned a bunch of reporters into selling the false narrative he spun on the Iran Deal. And with a trio of Obama speechwriters on Charlie Rose laughing about how many American's bought their cleverly crafted 'Keep Your Doctor / Keep Your Plan' lie.
Why do this unseemly looking bragging/laughing now, with Obama still in office? The answer is, because they've won and they know it. The clock is ticking down to zero and there's really nothing anybody could do, no political penalty that could made. It's an article of faith among Progressives that the only way you advance the ball on the more radical Progressive agenda items in this backwards country is by tricking people. You really do have to fool them to get any where.
"And then...ha ha...then we told'em if they liked their doctor they could keep their doctor... AND THOSE SUCKERS BOUGHT IT!"
So the reason we're seeing this bragging now is that these Progressives in the White House want full credit with the base for the trickery they've done while they have the full spotlight that being in the White House affords them for their bragging. It makes sense to drop the pretense now & laugh & brag about how you punk'd the country on health care and Iran's nuclear program if you want full credit from the kind of people who will admire what you did. I summed up the attitude of these Obama officials in a tweet earlier today:
"Iran Deal? ObamaCare? Sure, we lied. We tricked you. Fuck you. So what? What can you do about it now? Nothing! Ha ha! Suckers!"
You can expect more of this in the coming months, despite the strong pushback some are making in defense of Rhodes, claiming he was the victim of a NYT's writer with an agenda. The video of Obama's speech writers yucking it up over the gullible American people who bought their ObamaCare lies is much harder to explain away, which is why it's being largely ignored by the DNC Media echo chamber.
Friday, April 15, 2016
Restoration Or Annihilation:
This Is The Choice Conservatives Face
In Trump Vs. Cruz
You Either Want To Restore This Constitutional Republic Or Scrap It For Something Else. Which Is It? At this stage of the race, halfway through the month of April, it's clear now what the choice is American Conservatives face in this 2016 Presidential race. At their core the two main candidates have clearly revealed who they are.
Donald Trump is running now as being exactly what he is: an authoritarian strong man who, like Obama, if he sees the Constitution at all, sees it as only a barrier to be shoved aside when it gets in his way. Trump never mentions the Constitution or Obama's manifest abuses of it unless he's directly asked about it, and it's clear from his short, disinterested answers the subject quite frankly bores him.
Contrast this with Ted Cruz, who is running as a Constitutional Conservative who has an extensive track record behind him of caring about and taking action on behalf of preserving, protecting and defending the US Constitution against those who attempt to undermine it & the rights & liberties it guarantees the American people. Unlike Trump, Cruz understands what it is that makes America great. America's Founders created a governmental system based on God-given rights in which all citizens are equal before the law. They enacted and enshrined this system at a time they fully recognized they were not living up to it, as I explain here. They created a government of three separate but co-equal branches, a Congress, a Supreme Court and a President, each one designed to fulfill a specific role and serve as a check and balance to the other two.
The role of government, as the Founders saw it, was not to enlarge it's own power to benefit itself or one particular class of citizens over another. Instead, the role of government was to be limited to helping citizens secure & enjoy the rights & the liberties they received from their Creator. The Constitution is a document written with two main ends in mind: enumerating the rights of American citizens and defining and very specifically LIMITING the role of the government in the lives of those citizens. The Framers set up their government in this exact way because they had just LEFT a European continent where monarchies and class distinctions were the order of the day. Rights were whatever the current strong man on the throne said they were. Your liberties were whatever your betters decreed them to be at the current time. As any reading of the Federalist Papers will quickly demonstrate, the Founders were explicitly aware of what they were discarding and rejecting from their European brethren as they formed their new government.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all my new Alt Right Trump-Humping friends on social media who spent the last few months reminding me why Americans shit-canned King George for George Washington. You guys have been swell!
They purposefully set about creating a government about as far away from European monarchy and it's raw exercises of power as can be imagined. This American system IS what made America great. The incredible amount of freedom, liberty & prosperity American citizens have enjoyed in her history is a direct result of the Founders efforts. And America will not be returned to that greatness until the abuses & corruption of Progressives like Obama have been reversed and rolled back.
Donald Trump is not the guy to repair the damage Obama has done to our Constitution.
This is the task all those who value America face: the restoration of this Constitutional Republic. Getting our government working again FOR all the people, as the Founders intended. Listen to Cruz as he's campaigning on the trail these last few months. This is EXACTLY what he talks about doing, achieving this restoration, fixing the Federal Government so it'll stop catering to an elite political class as it strips rights and liberties from the rest of us. Trump isn't promising a return to the American Constitutional Republic; far from it. What he's promising is to go even further into exercises of raw naked power from the Oval Office that even Obama never dreamed of trying. He has no respect for our Constitution and clearly can't wait to get off the subject whenever it comes up.
Now that the field has narrowed to a 2 man race [yes I see that hand waving there, I'm ignoring you like most of America, John Kasich!] the core differences between the two remaining candidates are being laid into a bold contrast. I call upon all Americans to make their choice, and to choose wisely.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Internet Streaming Has Made Cable & Satellite Dish Providers Obsolete
There are literally thousands of free hours of TV & Movie programming available to you from a simple Internet connection if you know where to look. We live in The Internet Age, but here's something that most people still paying big money for basic cable subscriptions don't know: The Networks who produce their own shows all have their own Internet pages where you can stream current and recent episodes of their programming. What Cable & Satellite Dish providers have been doing is inserting themselves between you and the networks as middlemen, having you pay for channel packages where they get a cut of the money. These channel packages they make you pay for include over a dozen channels you never even glance at. While the networks are more than happy to take their cut of the money from the cable & satellite providers, they also recognize the value of making their shows available for streaming directly to viewers over the Internet. The problem is many people are still unaware of this, and so are still paying a cable or Satellite Dish provider for access to programming they could be streaming for much less or even for free over the Internet if only they were aware they could do that. Here's what you do:
Buy a Netflix subscription for $9.99 a month so you can watch older seasons of your favorite shows. I recently did this with the CW's show Arrow, which is currently in it's 4th season. I watched seasons 1-3 on Netflix over the past month. For more recent & current seasons of your favorite shows, you go to either Hulu or directly to the network's own home pages. Hulu is a great website for TV streaming because it has programming from all the major networks in one place. Instead of hunting down free episodes on 20 different network webpages, you can find most available free episodes on this one site. An $8/month subscription at Hulu gives you access to more shows and movies, but you don't need it to watch the plentiful free programming available there.
Hulu's Home Page Even if you decide to buy a Hulu subscription, that $8/month plus $9/month for Netflix is still FAR less than $35 or so most cable/satellite providers are charging for a basic channel package. Hulu doesn't have all the content that each network makes available, however, so it's still worth it to check out their webpages. Here's NBC's webpage where you can find episodes of many of their current shows & watch them for free: http://www.nbc.com NBC's current show list: http://www.nbc.com/shows/current ABC's show list page where you can watch full episodes for free. http://abc.go.com/shows CBS's home page, with a list of all their shows, many of which have current/recent episodes that can be viewed for free. http://www.cbs.com Here's the CBS Supergirl page, where you can watch 5 episodes for free right now: http://www.cbs.com/shows/supergirl/ The CW Network home page, where free episodes of all their current shows are available for viewing: http://www.cwtv.com The Fox Network shows can be seen here: http://www.fox.com For instance, here's the full episode page for The X-Files new season, where 6 episodes are now available for free viewing; http://www.fox.com/the-x-files/full-episodes The FX Network home page: http://www.fxnetworks.com TNT/TBS http://www.tntdrama.com AMC Network: http://www.amc.com For you news & political junkies out there, you can see video clips from all the top shows on Fox News and CNN: Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/shows/index.html?intcmp=hpnav CNN: http://www.cnn.com
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Dear "Conservative" Media:
BE A MAN!
Do Your Jobs. Start Vetting Trump Instead Of Using Him For Ratings One of the best scenes in The Godfather happens when Vito Corleone is being asked a favor by his godson, the actor/singer Johnny Fontaine.
Let's re-imagine that dialogue a little bit to fit what's happened between the Conservative Media and Donald Trump for the past six months.
[click on the image to see the picture at full size]
We all know what happened. Megyn Kelly did her job testing Trump on his greatest vulnerability if he ends up pitted against Hillary Clinton & the DNC Media's #WaronWomen narrative.
Trump threw a huge tantrum and Conservative media got the message loud and clear: BACK OFF.
And they did. Like a bunch of whipped puppies, Conservative media launched a full scale retreat when it came to vetting Donald Trump. Nobody has dared to ask him another #WaronWomen question.
I get why DNC Media wont ask him yet. They are holding their fire as they try to engineer the Trump vs. Hillary match up they so desperately want.
But hey Conservative media, what's YOUR excuse for not vetting Trump?
Your ratings? SCREW YOUR RATINGS. Do your job. This guy is a fantastically flawed candidate, he's gonna go down in flames in a general election when the Democrats go after him with #WaronWomen and his business failures 24/7 and by not speaking up now and doing your jobs you are ENABLING this.
So what if Trump throws a tantrum and storms off the set & won't go on your shows any more? You spent 8 years lamenting nobody would vet Obama. You're just a hypocrite if you let Trump coast to this nomination unvetted just so DNC Media can take him down with ease.
As I discussed here yesterday, Trump is especially vulnerable on women. He has decades of radio & TV interviews behind him where he said the most amazingly inflammatory & misogynistic statements. Why is BUZZFEED the only one's mining this treasure trove that exposes Trump's biggest Achilles heel?
You got something better to do, Conservative Media? Like your bringing Trump on your show for an hour long free infomercial where you toss him softballs the night before every major primary?
Too many of you in Conservative media are deliberately playing softball with this guy in exchange for ratings, and many Conservatives see exactly what you're doing. You're selling out for a buck, the same thing you're always accusing DNC Media of doing.
There's still time to stop Trump before he secures this nomination. It can be done if Conservative Media quits using this guy for ratings and starts doing it's real job: informing the public about his ACTUAL record in business and his execrable behavior towards women.
Do it now and prove you have some integrity. Before the DNC Media does it for you starting in July.
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
The Brutal Truth:
The Conservative Movement
Is Leaderless
There Will Be No National Gains For Conservatism In America Until This Changes
Conservatism has many pundits, but no real leaders. That's how as a movement it gets taken to the cleaners over and over again. Until this changes the movement will continue to see little/no progress nationally.
For many years now, I have asked people 'who are the *national* Conservative leaders in this country?', and they have inevitably responded by naming somebody in the E! Wing of Conservative media: talk radio, TV, columnists, etc.
Why no, in fact, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, Charles Krauthammer, etc. are not Conservative leaders. They are pundits. Pundits are people who make their living commenting on things the nation's leaders and political class do. They don't lead anything.
A Conservative leader would be someone who holds real power or is running for an office to hold real power or organizing people for such an effort.
Conservatism hasn't had a real leader of this kind since Reagan retired from public life. And because Conservatism hasn't had any real leaders for the last 30 years, it's an amorphous movement without clear, well defined goals/agenda.
This is how the GOP establishment has been able to take advantage of the Conservative movement for it's votes while giving it no real say in how the party is run.
Conservatives Make Up Most Of The Republican Party
According to every pollster that's looked into it, the GOP has been comprised of more than 60% Conservatives for decades. In recent years that trend climbed as high as 70%.
Conservatives make up around 40% of the country nationally and more than 70% of the Republican party since 2010.
So, you'd think, Conservatives should have gotten a seat in the GOP party leadership a long time ago, right? Well you would be wrong then. Conservatives Should Have Gained Control Of The GOP Long Ago
"Thanks for voting us into power again, you Conservative suckers!"
Conservatives are now, and always have been, insurgents in the GOP party. We're revolutionaries. Or as Senator John McCain says, 'whacko birds'.
Conservatives are an insurgency inside the GOP that makes up 70% of the party yet has always been frozen out of the leadership. We've had the NUMBERS and the actual POWER to take this goddamn party over for decades, but we haven't had the WILL or the LEADERSHIP.
If Conservatives can demonstrate they have the WILL to take this party over, or to make a new party, a change will come.
The GOP leadership has used our Conservative votes to once again attain power & then shun us. They need us for elections, then ignore us.
"If only my party didn't have so many whacko birds in it..."
Critics of Conservatism such as the recently emerging 'Alt Right' are correct about 1 thing. Conservatives haven't gotten it done. We HAVE failed. At the national level, Conservatives are STILL on the outside looking in. If Conservatives had focus & real leadership, they'd have taken this GOP party over LONG ago. This criticism is, in fact, quite true.
For over a decade I've been saying Conservatism does not make real, concrete advances at the national level in D.C. until the GOP Party leadership is REPLACED. The strategy of sending a few more Conservatives to Congress WITHIN the GOP has not worked because the present leadership freezes them out.
"Whew! Another election gone by and our strategy to keep Conservatives out of Party leadership positions continues to pay off! But it's getting harder!"
The Brutal Truth? The GOP is a party where those running it from the top leadership positions hate and loathe most of their own party's base. This present leadership has used careful and clever strategy for decades to ensure no Conservatives rise to any powerful leadership positions within their own party.
And if you needed more proof replacing this leadership is the ONLY option if Conservatives are staying in this party, you saw it recently when GOP establishment types like Dole, Hatch & McConnell made it clear they preferred Trump to Ted Cruz. Rather than let a Conservative get anywhere NEAR actual power at the federal level in D.C., the GOP leadership would embrace President Donald Trump.
The Moderates who have always run the GOP Party & would burn D.C. to the ground before they'd help put 1 of the 3 federal branches of the government in the hands of a real Conservative.
We've Arrived At A Time For Choosing. But There's No Leadership Helping The Movement To Make The Necessary Choice
The Conservative movement has only 2 options here at this stage. And it's time for real leadership to emerge to help it CHOOSE one.
1. We take the GOP over in a revolt and throw out the present leadership. Will take another 2-3 elections, lots of investment of time & $.
2. Conservatives leave the GOP en masse & form a third Conservative party where it can support Cons & set a Con agenda without interference.
We'd need a person or persons to clearly spell out the choices, canvas the movement, then LEAD it towards a consensus & follow through on it. And no, some TV pundit talking head or opinion columnist won't provide that kind of leadership. Or a guy yelling on the radio.
Some of the most visible people in the Entertainment Wing of New Media have embraced Populism & abandoned Conservative principles. So I don't think any real Conservative leadership will emerge from Talk/TV Land to take the reins & guide the movement where it needs to go.
Right now Conservatives are at the point where they can force GOP leadership to vacate a post, as with Boehner being replaced by Ryan. But until Conservatives are powerful enough in the party they can force a vacancy AND ALSO determine who FILLS that vacancy, we're not there
I'm on the record which option I want to pursue. I want to throw this present GOP leadership out & take the party over. With real focused leadership, drive and commitment, this could be done by 2020 *if* most of the movement is energized to seek it. Conservatives have sent enough new members to Congress since 2010 to force a leadership shakeup, but still don't have enough to wrest control away from the establishment clique. That's going to take 1-2 more elections where enough Conservatives are in Congress to actually turn the tide.
The 3rd party option, though, will take far longer, be far more difficult to do, building a new national political party from the ground up. If we opt for the 3rd Party route & leave the GOP en masse, it'd take us around a decade to become competitive with Democrats/GOP. And a decade is being optimistic, assuming everything in the building up of the new party goes well. Reagan Understood The Moment, Led A Movement To Make A Choice, And Followed Through On It
Reagan emerged at the right time & told Americans this was a time for choosing. He clearly spelled out the options. He spent over 30 years giving speeches, organizing and then leading people to take action. He was functioning as a leader for the Conservative movement long before he entered the White House in 1980.
The Speech Ronald Reagan gave in 1964 that defined Conservatism for the next 5 decades.
The Conservative movement needs a Reagan right now, somebody who can explain where we're at, what choices we face, and then call for a decision. Do we take over the GOP? Or do we make a 3rd Party? It's time to decide.
In the 27 years since Regan left office, no real leadership emerged to take the reins. We've been looking for the 'new Reagan' for decades.
We need to remember, Reagan had to fight his OWN party, not just the Democrats, to get a shot at the White House. GOP didn't want him.
Reagan accomplished so much while in office, we tend to forget it wasn't just Dems screaming in his ear for him to stop what he was doing. He had plenty of GOP party people screaming for him stop, to change direction, stop being crazy, etc. If the GOP establishment had had it's way, the Reagan presidency would have never happened.
Because Reagan was an effective leader who organized the movement to resist the Establishment's efforts to shut him out, they didn't get their way.
Why Conservatives Must Stop Looking To Pundits For Leadership
In the absence of real committed Conservative leadership, our movement has fallen prey to populists, hucksters & opportunists. Many of the E! Wing pundits have geared their populism around selling constant outrage, not leading or organizing for real change. This is why looking to Radio & TV & Book media personalities/celebrities for 'leadership' is such a huge mistake.
When he's asked, Rush Limbaugh will tell you he's an ENTERTAINER. He might SELL Conservatism on his show, but he's not LEADING the movement. Same with Palin. She long ago traded in any political leadership in the movement for TV celebrity.She now embraces populism & Trump.
If you've been looking to E! Wing people for Conservative leadership, I don't blame you, though. You did that because right now there isn't any. If we had real effective, focused Conservative leadership in this country, the GOP would've had Conservatives running it long ago
So many have been looking for Conservative leadership in all the wrong places, from a cacophony of Populists out to drive ratings and sell books
Stoking constant outrage might feel good, but what it ALSO does is hide the fact you're still on the outside looking in. Powerless. It's time to reject the outrage mongers if all they're doing is stoking the outrage to hide the fact we're not getting anywhere.
Actually taking over the GOP & running it would be far harder than sitting outside looking in & raging at how we've been betrayed again. Maybe this is why some prefer the Never Ending Populist Outrage Circus and have joined Trump's traveling road show. Stoking outrage isn't hard. Actually organizing and fighting to accomplish an actual agenda is far harder.
We're actually encouraged by the Never Ending Populist Outrage Circus to remain passive, watching what the GOP leadership does. The Never Ending Drama of waiting to see if at last these goons in DC are going to do right by us.
Here's a tip: I think most of the people employed in the Never Ending Outrage Circus & Traveling Road Show™ know what the answer is to that. And the answer is no, as long as this present leadership is in charge, no they're NOT going to do right by us Conservatives. The E! Wing pundit class has already figured this out. They know the GOP leadership is never going to change how it does business.
If you're raking in the $ and the attention by selling outrage, why would you EVER want to provide an actual solution to the problem?
Let's see a show of hands: how many in the E! Wing's Never Ending Outrage Circus & Traveling Road Show™ spend any real time at all talking about Conservatives doing either course of action facing us? How often do Rush, Mark, Ann, Sarah, Laura, et. al., talk about Conservatives throwing out the present GOP leadership or leaving to make a 3rd party? And if they ever DO get around to talking about it, how many have an actual plan or strategy for making it happen?
Outrage & anger are not a platform for building anything. It can start a revolution, but once the current regime is gone, you need planning. And no, the most visible Conservatives in America, the E! Wing people, aren't interested in leading a revolt to take the GOP over. Neither are they interested in starting a 3rd party.
Because either option would mean hard work, careful planning and years of sustained effort.
In other words, both options would require real LEADERSHIP, which the E! Wing isn't interested at all in providing. So not only are many Conservatives looking to the wrong places for leadership, they end up looking at E! Wing celebrities who don't even want that job. The E! Wing has found it's niche selling outrage & anger and are ill prepared or suited to move beyond that to providing leadership.
One valuable thing this last election cycle has brought into stark contrast: the difference between Populism & Conservatism. It's fun to join the Never Ending Outrage Circus & Traveling Roadshow™ until you realize it's not going anywhere and doesn't have any vision beyond telling you what you want hear at any given moment.
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Fiction Becomes Reality: Donald Trump Is A Modern Day
A candidate for President has now openly boasted before the world about how blindly his personality cult will follow him.
If you trust the media polls, Trump's boast looks accurate. This was just another example of a long line of outrageous things he's said during this campaign that likely would have derailed another candidate. Some commentators have claimed what Trump meant here was that he thinks anything he does is right, he can't do something wrong. That's not my sense of what he means. He knows shooting someone on Fifth Avenue would be wrong. The point he's making here isn't about his moral sensibilities, it's about the blind devotion of his followers, which has grown to a point that perhaps even he himself is starting to be amazed by it. What Trump's 'I could shoot someone!' boast gets at is that he sees himself as being unstoppable because of the blind commitment his followers have made to him. Trump truly believes his personality cult has grown so large, his winning this race is a foregone conclusion. And there's nothing he could ever do that would cause him to start losing his devoted fans. Trump is a mass media creation who had a direct hand in fashioning the image of himself he is now selling to the public. In the public eye since the 1970's, Trump has carefully crafted a public persona of himself as always right, always in charge, always successful and always very, very rich. Much commentary has been spent this election cycle looking at how the media covers Trump and how Trump reacts to media coverage, especially any criticism he receives from it. He demands uninterrupted adulation at all times, and woe to any reporter or media person who dares to offend him. Trump spent the run up to the Iowa primary loudly complaining that Fox News had dared to defy him by not removing Megyn Kelly from their debate. Even more recently, after weeks of Trump attacking & insulting fellow candidate Ted Cruz, Cruz responded with his first negative ad against Trump - and this led to Trump loudly threatening both a lawsuit and again bringing up the possibility he will run as a 3rd party candidate. As many in the media stare aghast at this monster they helped create, let's take a look back at a perceptive film from the 1950's that presciently explored many of the mass media themes that have arisen from Trump's presidential campaign. The rise of mass media & it's use of personality cults to drive popular opinion was explored in director Elia Kazan's 1957 film 'A Face In The Crowd'.
The film depicts the rise and fall of Larry 'Lonesome' Rhodes, an Arkansas grifter plucked from obscurity to become a radio & TV personality who sells products like mattresses and energy supplements. If all you know of Andy Griffith is his wholesome portrayal of Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry RFD, here in his first big role he turns in an Oscar worthy performance as a man who's about to gain the whole world while losing his soul. With his folksy charm, country singing and down home humor, Rhodes becomes an instant hit who's popularity grows to such an extent he quickly becomes a national celebrity. Rich, famous, and now with millions of people hanging on his every word waiting to see what he'll say next, at first Rhodes can scarcely believe what's happening to him. Then human nature takes it's course and Rhodes begins taking advantage of his newfound power over others.
As the story unfolds, we watch as all this goes straight to Rhodes' head. Drunk on the power he now holds over his fans, he becomes contemptuous of them and the people who are sponsoring him. He realizes he's the public face of a huge con game. He knows in his heart he's still just a grifter running a con, and it eats at him. Rhodes is exposed when the network executive [Patricia Neal] who helped create him can no longer bear the sight of what he's become. As Rhodes is in the studio bragging about how stupid and blind his audience is, she turns on the microphones and gives America a look at the true face of the man they've become enthralled with.
As a stunned America watches, Rhodes boasts to his fellow cast members:
“Sell that stuff about a man among men to those morons out there? Shucks,” says Lonesome, “I sell them chicken fertilizer as caviar. I can make them eat dog food and think it’s steak.
Sure, I’ve got them like this. You know what the public’s like? A cage full of guinea pigs. Goodnight, you stupid idiots. Goodnight, you miserable slobs. They’re a lot of trained seals. I toss them a dead fish and they’ll flap their flippers.”
The scene in which Rhodes' contempt for his followers is exposed and his downfall begins can be seen in this Youtube clip:
The development of the personality cult has come a long way in just the last few years, however.
While Rhodes was exposed when it was revealed he held his audience in abject contempt, Trump can openly boast his followers are so enthralled by his awesomeness they will instantly ignore any wrong done, any blasphemy uttered.
Rhodes was mouthing words given to him by others to sell products & political candidates. Trump is different because he's writing his own script. And with this campaign for President of the United States, at last Trump can now try to close the deal in which he's selling the object closest and dearest to his heart: himself.
The post isn't signed, but whoever wrote it was prescient.
It's been incredible watching some of the same people who spent 8 years marveling at the personality cult that sprang up around Barack Obama actively help to create one around Donald Trump.
You can't spend all this time decrying Obama's over reaches & expansion of Presidential powers at the expense of the other two Constitutional branches...and then turn around and throw your support behind Donald Trump, who has literally promised to be Obama-On-Steroids.
If you listen to what Trump says, he doesn't talk about working with Congress or respecting court rulings. Asked how he'll accomplish he agenda, he deliberately avoids specifics for generalized answers like "I'll fix it, it'll be awesome." If you get the impression he thinks he's going to make stuff happen by sheer willpower, you're not alone.
A few years ago, Ann Coulter wrote a book called 'Demonic' in which she laid out in great detail how Democrats use mobs and personality cults to drive a progressive agenda forward. She now apparently believes naked populism is the only way to win an election and has ditched Conservatism to adopt the tactics of the mob because it will 'work' and this election is too important to lose.
Not a single vote has been cast in a single primary at this point and the present election cycle has served a useful purpose: it's separated those who really believe in and stand on Conservative principles and those who don't.
