Oh! Say, can you see?
Donald Trump is leading the Republican polls (ahead of a GOP dynasty). Hillary is being pilloried about e-mails (seriously, how does anyone…
Donald Trump is leading the Republican polls (ahead of a GOP dynasty). Hillary is being pilloried about e-mails (seriously, how does anyone NOT know the only way to erase a hard drive is to burn it?) and Bernie Sanders, a Socialist from Vermont is gaining ground (I got nothing); you’d think this presidential election cycle couldn’t get more bizarre.
You’d be wrong.
Enter Deez Nuts. The brainchild of a snarky 15 year-old Iowa boy, Brady Olson. Deez platform “…suggests a Libertarian tinge, including giving voting rights to citizens of American Samoa, but deporting illegal immigrants with ‘the lone exception of being a minor.’”
On the one hand, it’s terribly funny. I mean smart and funny. But it does beg the question that with Deez Nuts running can Larryz Labia be far behind?
On the other hand, it indicates just how politically far we have fallen. When a fictional non-person is polling at 9% and the guy leading the polls is a brash, loud mouth asshole that simply bloviates dime store rhetoric and everyone knows won’t win, I think the only thing left would be the arrival of locusts.
I want to believe (nay, have to believe) that anyone with an IQ over 75 understands two things. One, the popular vote does not elect the president (Al Gore in 2000 taught us that) and two, we live in a corporatocracy NOT a democracy.
Donald Trump is Donald Trump. He is at once the best of NYC and the worst of NYC. While I may be vehemently against what he is saying, I won’t deny he is speaking some truths (however reductive they may be). But we must understand that the people who know they won’t win have the luxury to speak the truth.
You know who else spoke some harsh truths? Ross Perot. Remember him?
As near as I can tell, the only real platform Trump has is whoever yells loudest will win, so whatever platform he may actually have is being overshadowed by the wildly offensive and inflammatory things he keeps braying about. Ultimately, and perhaps even deliberately, he is lowering the bar. And the bar for politics has been low for a while. Shouldn’t the goal of leaders be raising the bar?
If you read Matt Tiabbi’s article Inside the GOP Clown Car, you’ll discover how Trump is lowering the bar and you’ll discover just how far he is lowering it. I mean, in the first debate, he referred to the other Republicans as contestants. Maybe he views the presidential election process as some type of Trump sponsored Limbo game? That might be about the only thing Trump has not lent his name to.
Perhaps I am reading too much into it, BUT I don’t view the electing of a President as a fucking game or contest. Whatever my belief’s may be (and they’re left enough to make Bernie Sanders look like a Libertarian) I still believe in the potential and the power of a democracy. I see the political process as a careful and strategic manipulation of tons of moving parts and people (OK, maybe that is a little like a game). But ANYONE that can master all of that and remain sane? Well, that’s a leader.
Trump may have mastered the art of the deal but he’ll never master the art of politics. It takes a finesse he just doesn’t have. And, frankly, everyone is wasting their time talking about Trump, including myself. We all KNOW he won’t win. The Republicans won’t let him and neither will the corporations controlling the Republicans and Washington.
Frankly, Trump is just an abrasive and poorly quaffed variant of Deez Nuts.
If Donald Trump is a serious presidential candidate than I am the Queen of France.
Let’s not all turn into cynical twats who believe the system is too broke to fix. It is broke and just because it is beyond duct tape doesn’t mean it’s irreparable. Let’s not let these loudmouth fuck nuts hi-jack the idea of what it is to be part of a democracy, at least what remains of it.
In his book Against Happiness, Philosopher Eric G. Wilson wrote:
…politics has now become entertainment. We can turn on the television any night of the week and witness shrill political pundits (and candidates) argue their dogma. Or we can engage in that most pleasurable of sports: mocking the pomposity of political speeches, filled as they are with worn clichés and vapid promises. We turn the political process to commodity, an object for enjoyable consumption. Democracy becomes dumb, and we blithely cheer its increasing demise.
What, then, is America becoming?
Whatever it is becoming, it’s not good. We can still change this.
Originally published at keithrhiggons.com on August 21, 2015.