Taibbi writes: "Earlier this week, an African-American protester was
sucker-punched by a 78-year-old man in a cowboy hat at a Trump rally in
North Carolina. The video went viral, and reporters later tracked down John
McGraw, the red-faced Trumpthusiast who'd thrown the punch."
Donald Trump and Sarah Palin. (photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
Why Trump's Endorsements Should Scare Your Pants Off
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
12 March 16
Collaborators like Ben Carson are just as dangerous as fanatics
Earlier this week, an African-American protester was sucker-punched by a
78-year-old man in a cowboy hat at a Trump rally in North Carolina. The
video went viral, and reporters later tracked down John McGraw, the
red-faced Trumpthusiast who'd thrown the punch. McGraw explained why he'd
belted Rakeem Jones:
"Number one, we don't know if he's ISIS," McGraw said.
One has to commend the Inside Edition reporter doing the interview for not
bursting out laughing, or dropping to the ground in shock, at this moment.
McGraw went on:
"The next time we see him, we might have to kill him," he said. "We don't
know who he is. He might be with a terrorist organization."
That same night, Trump told Anderson Cooper he wasn't backing down from his
plan to bar all Muslims from entering the country. "I think Islam hates us,"
he said, adding, "It's very hard to separate because you don't know who is
who. We have to be very vigilant."
These episodes are like a child's game of "telephone," only played with
bone-ignorant adults. The game starts when Trump personifies "Islam" under
one label, apparently not realizing that this represents an awesomely
diverse collection of people who collectively represent about a quarter of
the world's population.
How will his plan work? Will he slap an outright ban on everyone who isn't a
nun from Liechtenstein? How is American commerce going to work when we cut
off incoming travel from the 49 countries that have Muslim majorities? Will
the new Trump projection of the globe no longer include the continent of
Africa? Will the ban extend to Sunnis and Shiites, or does Trump not know
the difference? (Since he was iffy on "Kurds" versus "Quds," I'm guessing
the latter.)
Trump's Islam-ban idea fits in perfectly with his strategy for dealing with
most problems, which is to physically eliminate anything that makes him even
slightly uncomfortable, even at great cost, and even when it would be a
million times easier to do ten minutes of reading in search of more targeted
solutions.
Remember, Trump says he only wants to close the borders to all Muslims
"until we can figure out what's going on." This means he actually believes
it will take less time, logistically, to wall off the United States to 1.6
billion people inhabiting every time zone on Earth than it would be to craft
a strategy for dealing with a relatively tiny band of religious dingbats
roaming Mesopotamia in search of an apocalyptic showdown with the army of
Rome.
In reality, "until we can figure out what's going on" means "never," because
if Trump had any inclination to "figure it out," he'd do it before he
created the mother of all logistical and diplomatic nightmares, not after.
Trump's ignorance is monstrous, but it's nothing compared to that of his
supporters, who apparently take "we don't know who is who" to mean that ISIS
could be just about anyone not wearing a NASCAR uniform. This is like the
Red Scare all over again, only dumber and more racist. We're like a week
away from seeing Trumpshirts in Texas or Alabama gang-tackle a college
student for eating tabouleh.
Amidst all of this, the Trump endorsements have been coming fast and
furious, with pyramid-lover and knife-combat enthusiast Ben Carson being the
latest.
Until recently, most of the celebrity Trump-supporters have been exactly the
sort of swollen-headed, oxygen-deprived has-beens one would expect to find
backing a reality TV spectacle like Trump's campaign. Gary Busey, Hulk
Hogan, Mike Ditka, John Daly, Stephen Baldwin, John Rocker and Bobby Knight
are all aboard the Trump train. Celebrity white dudes with anger management
issues, unite!
Famed ex-centerfielder and not-smart-person Johnny Damon is another recent
Trump devotee, citing among other things Trump's "first class" golf courses
as a reason for his support. Wrestler Jerry "The King" Lawler, most famous
for his faux-showdowns with the late Andy Kaufman, says supporting Trump is
"great." This is funny because there is a growing theory on the Internet
that Trump is actually Kaufman's foul-mouthed alter ego Tony Clifton,
exhumed for one last bold, brilliant prank. And beyond that there has been a
list of assorted freaks and weirdos from the political margins, from Ann
Coulter to Pat Buchanan to Michael Savage to Phyllis Schlafly to Sarah Palin
(whose endorsement speech seemed at times like a public service ad about the
dangers of household inhalants) who have cast their lot with the Trumpster.
But the more troubling pattern came when the so-called "establishment"
endorsements started to flow in. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who
appeared to be blinking a cry for help in Morse code during Trump's Super
Tuesday victory speech, was the first and most craven of the Trump-converts
from the GOP mainstream. Christie brought with him one of his own former
supporters, Maine's Paul LePage, making it two sitting governors now in
Trump's tent.
Then there was Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a major Iraq War supporter who
apparently doesn't mind sharing a stage with that war's most ardent GOP
critic. Even Trump joked at the Sessions announcement, "I hate to say it,
but I'm becoming mainstream."
NASCAR CEO Brian France, who is not the most loathsome sports official alive
only because God keeps forgetting to hit Roger Goodell with lightning, was
another relatively important "mainstream" endorsement. Criticized for his
announcement, France claimed he didn't know what Trump stood for. "I don't
even know all [his] policies, truthfully," he said.
The significance of all of these endorsements can't be understated. The way
you build a truly vicious nationalist movement is to wed a relatively small
core of belligerent idiots to a much larger group of opportunists and
spineless fellow travelers whose primary function is to turn a blind eye to
things. We may not have that many outright Nazis in America, but we have
plenty of cowards and bootlickers, and once those fleshy dominoes start
tumbling into the Trump camp, the game is up.
People like Chris Christie and Paul LePage and Jeff Sessions surely know
what Donald Trump is all about. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn't be
debasing themselves by endorsing him. After all, they didn't, at least not
until he became the practically inevitable nominee.
These are just half-smart politicians who think they see the writing on the
wall and are making a move sooner rather than later, so they can nail down
better jobs later on, or maybe just a line of communication. Christie, who
if you haven't heard yet was once a federal prosecutor, is probably gunning
for the attorney general job. And LePage practically came out and said he
was looking for a post after his endorsement, explaining that he believed
Trump would make a great president "if he puts together a good team." Hint
hint!
As for Carson, it took about two seconds after he endorsed Trump for this
formerly proud-seeming man to start humiliating himself. He explained the
seeming incongruity of jumping in with a race-baiting blowhard by saying
that he was supporting a Donald Trump not visible to the rest of the world.
"There are two Donald Trumps. There's the Donald Trump that you see on
television and who gets out in front of big audiences, and there's the
Donald Trump behind the scenes," he said. "They're two different people.
One's very much an entertainer, the other is a thinking individual." Carson
added, devastatingly to himself and what is left of his reputation, that
this other, unseen Trump was "cerebral."
Once you go down the road of calling Donald Trump cerebral, you'll probably
put up with just about anything.
These people will rationalize their support by telling themselves that they
can do more to keep this Trump thing from going off the rails by influencing
it from within, but in reality it doesn't work like that. Godwin's law
notwithstanding, once you kiss the ring, you're a non-factor, a good German.
And you won't say anything the next time some whooping fanatic belts an
"ISIS suspect" at a rally.
All along, Beltway pundits have insisted that Trump could never win because
there just aren't enough people in America who are that stupid. What those
people missed is that there are always plenty of otherwise sane people who
tend to fold and hop in line at the first show of strength.
Christie was the first of the major politicians, and there will be more. The
next step will probably be a series of defections in the media and among the
corporate donor class. They won't be fanatics. But like Christie on stage on
Super Tuesday, they'll keep their mouths shut. And that will be enough.
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Donald Trump and Sarah Palin. (photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-trumps-endorsements-should-sca
re-your-pants-off-20160311http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-trum
ps-endorsements-should-scare-your-pants-off-20160311
Why Trump's Endorsements Should Scare Your Pants Off
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
12 March 16
Collaborators like Ben Carson are just as dangerous as fanatics
arlier this week, an African-American protester was sucker-punched by a
78-year-old man in a cowboy hat at a Trump rally in North Carolina. The
video went viral, and reporters later tracked down John McGraw, the
red-faced Trumpthusiast who'd thrown the punch. McGraw explained why he'd
belted Rakeem Jones:
"Number one, we don't know if he's ISIS," McGraw said.
One has to commend the Inside Edition reporter doing the interview for not
bursting out laughing, or dropping to the ground in shock, at this moment.
McGraw went on:
"The next time we see him, we might have to kill him," he said. "We don't
know who he is. He might be with a terrorist organization."
That same night, Trump told Anderson Cooper he wasn't backing down from his
plan to bar all Muslims from entering the country. "I think Islam hates us,"
he said, adding, "It's very hard to separate because you don't know who is
who. We have to be very vigilant."
These episodes are like a child's game of "telephone," only played with
bone-ignorant adults. The game starts when Trump personifies "Islam" under
one label, apparently not realizing that this represents an awesomely
diverse collection of people who collectively represent about a quarter of
the world's population.
How will his plan work? Will he slap an outright ban on everyone who isn't a
nun from Liechtenstein? How is American commerce going to work when we cut
off incoming travel from the 49 countries that have Muslim majorities? Will
the new Trump projection of the globe no longer include the continent of
Africa? Will the ban extend to Sunnis and Shiites, or does Trump not know
the difference? (Since he was iffy on "Kurds" versus "Quds," I'm guessing
the latter.)
Trump's Islam-ban idea fits in perfectly with his strategy for dealing with
most problems, which is to physically eliminate anything that makes him even
slightly uncomfortable, even at great cost, and even when it would be a
million times easier to do ten minutes of reading in search of more targeted
solutions.
Remember, Trump says he only wants to close the borders to all Muslims
"until we can figure out what's going on." This means he actually believes
it will take less time, logistically, to wall off the United States to 1.6
billion people inhabiting every time zone on Earth than it would be to craft
a strategy for dealing with a relatively tiny band of religious dingbats
roaming Mesopotamia in search of an apocalyptic showdown with the army of
Rome.
In reality, "until we can figure out what's going on" means "never," because
if Trump had any inclination to "figure it out," he'd do it before he
created the mother of all logistical and diplomatic nightmares, not after.
Trump's ignorance is monstrous, but it's nothing compared to that of his
supporters, who apparently take "we don't know who is who" to mean that ISIS
could be just about anyone not wearing a NASCAR uniform. This is like the
Red Scare all over again, only dumber and more racist. We're like a week
away from seeing Trumpshirts in Texas or Alabama gang-tackle a college
student for eating tabouleh.
Amidst all of this, the Trump endorsements have been coming fast and
furious, with pyramid-lover and knife-combat enthusiast Ben Carson being the
latest.
Until recently, most of the celebrity Trump-supporters have been exactly the
sort of swollen-headed, oxygen-deprived has-beens one would expect to find
backing a reality TV spectacle like Trump's campaign. Gary Busey, Hulk
Hogan, Mike Ditka, John Daly, Stephen Baldwin, John Rocker and Bobby Knight
are all aboard the Trump train. Celebrity white dudes with anger management
issues, unite!
Famed ex-centerfielder and not-smart-person Johnny Damon is another recent
Trump devotee, citing among other things Trump's "first class" golf courses
as a reason for his support. Wrestler Jerry "The King" Lawler, most famous
for his faux-showdowns with the late Andy Kaufman, says supporting Trump is
"great." This is funny because there is a growing theory on the Internet
that Trump is actually Kaufman's foul-mouthed alter ego Tony Clifton,
exhumed for one last bold, brilliant prank. And beyond that there has been a
list of assorted freaks and weirdos from the political margins, from Ann
Coulter to Pat Buchanan to Michael Savage to Phyllis Schlafly to Sarah Palin
(whose endorsement speech seemed at times like a public service ad about the
dangers of household inhalants) who have cast their lot with the Trumpster.
But the more troubling pattern came when the so-called "establishment"
endorsements started to flow in. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who
appeared to be blinking a cry for help in Morse code during Trump's Super
Tuesday victory speech, was the first and most craven of the Trump-converts
from the GOP mainstream. Christie brought with him one of his own former
supporters, Maine's Paul LePage, making it two sitting governors now in
Trump's tent.
Then there was Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a major Iraq War supporter who
apparently doesn't mind sharing a stage with that war's most ardent GOP
critic. Even Trump joked at the Sessions announcement, "I hate to say it,
but I'm becoming mainstream."
NASCAR CEO Brian France, who is not the most loathsome sports official alive
only because God keeps forgetting to hit Roger Goodell with lightning, was
another relatively important "mainstream" endorsement. Criticized for his
announcement, France claimed he didn't know what Trump stood for. "I don't
even know all [his] policies, truthfully," he said.
The significance of all of these endorsements can't be understated. The way
you build a truly vicious nationalist movement is to wed a relatively small
core of belligerent idiots to a much larger group of opportunists and
spineless fellow travelers whose primary function is to turn a blind eye to
things. We may not have that many outright Nazis in America, but we have
plenty of cowards and bootlickers, and once those fleshy dominoes start
tumbling into the Trump camp, the game is up.
People like Chris Christie and Paul LePage and Jeff Sessions surely know
what Donald Trump is all about. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn't be
debasing themselves by endorsing him. After all, they didn't, at least not
until he became the practically inevitable nominee.
These are just half-smart politicians who think they see the writing on the
wall and are making a move sooner rather than later, so they can nail down
better jobs later on, or maybe just a line of communication. Christie, who
if you haven't heard yet was once a federal prosecutor, is probably gunning
for the attorney general job. And LePage practically came out and said he
was looking for a post after his endorsement, explaining that he believed
Trump would make a great president "if he puts together a good team." Hint
hint!
As for Carson, it took about two seconds after he endorsed Trump for this
formerly proud-seeming man to start humiliating himself. He explained the
seeming incongruity of jumping in with a race-baiting blowhard by saying
that he was supporting a Donald Trump not visible to the rest of the world.
"There are two Donald Trumps. There's the Donald Trump that you see on
television and who gets out in front of big audiences, and there's the
Donald Trump behind the scenes," he said. "They're two different people.
One's very much an entertainer, the other is a thinking individual." Carson
added, devastatingly to himself and what is left of his reputation, that
this other, unseen Trump was "cerebral."
Once you go down the road of calling Donald Trump cerebral, you'll probably
put up with just about anything.
These people will rationalize their support by telling themselves that they
can do more to keep this Trump thing from going off the rails by influencing
it from within, but in reality it doesn't work like that. Godwin's law
notwithstanding, once you kiss the ring, you're a non-factor, a good German.
And you won't say anything the next time some whooping fanatic belts an
"ISIS suspect" at a rally.
All along, Beltway pundits have insisted that Trump could never win because
there just aren't enough people in America who are that stupid. What those
people missed is that there are always plenty of otherwise sane people who
tend to fold and hop in line at the first show of strength.
Christie was the first of the major politicians, and there will be more. The
next step will probably be a series of defections in the media and among the
corporate donor class. They won't be fanatics. But like Christie on stage on
Super Tuesday, they'll keep their mouths shut. And that will be enough.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
