Prairie Weather

Yes, he is a fascist.

Very interesting article by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker on what Donald Trump brings to our politics.

Wouldn't surprise me if, as in so many moments during the 1990's and at the present  time, the deliberate manipulation of language by the Right isn't responsible for what we think  know.  It's an  old trick. Propaganda.

Gopnik points out that Donald Trump presents us with "a candidate for President who is the announced enemy of the openness that America has traditionally stood for and that drew persecuted émigrés ...  to America as to a golden land..."...Gopnik,NYer

Then (again) we're confronted with the F-word: "fascist."

Then a candidate who embraces the mottos and rhetoric of the pro-fascist groups of that same wretched time, has taken over one of our most venerable political parties, and he seems still in the ascendancy. His language remains not merely sloppy or incendiary but openly hostile to the simplest standards of truth and decency that have governed American politics. ...Gopnik,NYer

No.  I don't think "Fascist" is an exaggeration. The parallels with Germany in the 1930's is eerie.

What all forms of fascism have in common is the glorification of the nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with violence promised to its enemies, at home and abroad; the worship of power wherever it appears and whoever holds it; contempt for the rule of law and for reason; unashamed employment of repeated lies as a rhetorical strategy; and a promise of vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history. It promises to turn back time and take no prisoners. That it can appeal to those who do not understand its consequences is doubtless true. But the first job of those who do understand is to state what those consequences invariably are. Those who think that the underlying institutions of American government are immunized against it fail to understand history. In every historical situation where a leader of Trump’s kind comes to power, normal safeguards collapse. Ours are older and therefore stronger? Watching the rapid collapse of the Republican Party is not an encouraging rehearsal. Donald Trump has a chance to seize power. ...Gopnik,NYer

GOP top

I wouldnae gi'e thrumpence for either of 'em.

The many lives of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Three times in the past week, Justice Ginsburg has publicly discussed her view of the presidential race, in the sharpest terms. In an interview with The Times published Sunday, Justice Ginsburg said, “I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” joking that if her husband were alive, he might have said, “It’s time for us to move to New Zealand.”

Earlier, in an interview with The Associated Press that appeared on Friday, when asked to consider a Trump victory, Justice Ginsburg replied, “I don’t want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs.”...NYTeditorial

Oh golly gosh! I feel the cold fingers of Satan running down my backbone! 

Or is it that Ginsburg  is expressing what most of us are feeling: Trump is a joke -- a bad, bad joke. Of course, the justice is a woman trespassing on masculine (and worst of all) right wing,  judicial turf.  She might want to choose a better bet than New Zealand to get beyond the locker room fumes of Washington and New York.

Incredibly yuge!!

Got home from an incredible trip to the supermarket!  Picked up a yuge package at the PO!  Nearly ran over a gigantic armadillo on the way home!! 

Just so's you know my life is more exciting than yours.  But then, everything is more incredibly yuge for me than for you... unless you speak American.

Some of us hang together; some hate everyone

In barely two weeks, Republicans will converge in Cleveland for the Trumpocalypse, a fact-free and hate-filled gathering likely to be as scary as it will be entertaining. A week later the Democrats will assemble in Philadelphia in a focus-group-tested pander fest, as tightly scripted as the visualize-world-peace answers at a Miss Universe contest. ...You can search across the fruited plain and nowhere will you find a political convention for the affiliation that more Americans identify with than any other — independents. ...Egan,NYT

Is Hillary in the clear?

Dream on!  What we have here is a reminder that elections dip us into the hot water of truth vs. "image."  We've been relying on "image" (mostly a strange two-dimensional critter drawn by media) to a more or less attractive candidate for leadership.

More often than not you are encouraged to accept the image or what John Cassidy calls "the damning reprieve."

...While Comey’s decision didn’t come as a shock, the manner in which he couched and explained it was startling. Far from saying that Clinton and her aides hadn’t done anything wrong, or pooh-poohing the e-mail investigation as a minor matter, the F.B.I. director confirmed that Clinton sent and received numerous e-mails on her private server which contained top-secret information, and he described the decision not to recommend criminal charges only as a professional judgement. “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Comey said. ...John Cassidy,NYer

Whew!  Over that hurdle!

___

Television was first licensed for commercial broadcasting on July 1, 1941. By 1960, 87 percent of American households had television sets, and they were watching an average of five and ahalf hours per day [Television Bureau of Advertising 2003]. Contemporary observers anticipated a “revolution” in politics, pointing to an “infinite broadening of the democratic process . . . giving all Americans a clearer understanding of trends and issues” [Mickelson 1960], a “new direct and sensitive link between Washington
and the people” [Stanton 1962], and “a better medium for truth” [Taft 1951]. What took place in the years after television’s introduction was not a broadening of the democratic process, but rather a sharp decline in political participation. Average presidential turnout in both the 1980s and 1990s was lower than in any
decade since the 1920s, and outside the South (where a substantial remobilization of Black voters muted the decline) it was lower than in any decade since the 1820s. ...Gentzkow,Stanford