...Harris didn’t make her own way to prominence in the Democratic Party. She was picked out of the chorus line and guided along like a starlet in the old Hollywood studio system, which is the model to which the two political parties aspire. Someone in the film industry once said “the audience will know what they want when we show it to them”– the only defensible position for an artist to take. Big donors and political honchos aren’t supposed to be in the business of entertainment and diversion, but they view the American voter the same way; they have no intention of letting you write the script...
...Harris’ qualifications were supposed to be entirely theatrical. And she tried, a little too hard: the guffawing and contorted expressions were the affectations of a ham actor on stage. To be fair she was supposed to have had more time to prepare for her big run when Joe Biden sputtered out. She was in over her head in a way none of us could imagine. She did what people tend to do; she resorted to what she knew. Willie Brown’s former mistress played on her feminine wiles, as she saw them, combined with her impersonation of a television girl-boss (“I am speaking, sir!”); beyond that there was nothing.
...Harris’ qualifications were supposed to be entirely theatrical. And she tried, a little too hard: the guffawing and contorted expressions were the affectations of a ham actor on stage. To be fair she was supposed to have had more time to prepare for her big run when Joe Biden sputtered out. She was in over her head in a way none of us could imagine. She did what people tend to do; she resorted to what she knew. Willie Brown’s former mistress played on her feminine wiles, as she saw them, combined with her impersonation of a television girl-boss (“I am speaking, sir!”); beyond that there was nothing.
Substance was out of the question; the Democrats had spent the Biden years wreaking deliberate havoc. Harris running on her personality was Harris running away from her history. So the campaign tried to make the candidate’s lack of gravitas work for her. Thus the companion to “joy”, the “brat” theme. She wasn’t lacking in seriousness; no, she was fun-loving, relatable. The definition of brat, the internet tells me, is “confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold, and playfully defiant.” It must have seemed genius to the girls of Team Kamala at the time. But how is this–rebellious, bold, defiant--not an apt description of Trump as politician? If not for the fact the campaign seemed incapable of sizing up the competition, I would have thought they’d decided to out-Trump Donald Trump.
Joy failed them. The laughter was a little too loud to be genuine. All the joy was on the other side. Trump’s often vulgar humor started as a political consultant’s nightmare in 2016 but by 2024 not only had his initial admirers not grown weary of it, more of the fence-sitters and even detractors had been worn down. Because through the increasing madness prescribed by the ruling elite and their obvious disdain for us Trump’s persona, like his outsized confidence, wavered not a bit. Trump was stable, familiar, normal (achieving his opponents’ dreaded “normalization”) as his enemies became increasingly unstable, abnormal and relentless in their ongoing war on the familiar–no one recognizes the country they grew up in.
By 2024 the Democrats and progressive left had finished their unspoken transition from a class-based conspiracy of power–an elite faction conspiring with the economically disadvantaged to disempower the middle class–to its present conspiracy: an elite faction cultivating and conspiring with the psychologically damaged, to disempower all of us.
This is what we all see. This is why the Trump revolution succeeded. This is why the election is legitimate cause for celebration. But to think we will see it go away, with the mere election of a president, especially this president, is naive.
Trump enters office a lame duck, with no more elections to run. This only leaves him more susceptible to the designs of the cabal of “advisors” that will ultimately control him. These people, if drawn from elite ranks, will have no interest in the success or failure of his term and no ultimate interest in the fate of the country; they have other ideas and other loyalties. The high profile renegade heroes that joined the campaign–Robert Kennedy Jr, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard–are not going to be in the most crucial posts. It’s notable none of them, with the possible exception of Gabbard, who sold Trump as a peace candidate in apparent ignorance of Trump’s record and statements regarding Israel, dares challenge the capture of US foreign policy by the Jewish State. Even if Musk is somehow allowed to reform wasteful government and RFK to revolutionize public health–very long shots–the status quo order will have hardly deflected from its present course.
They’re already hard at work to maneuver Trump into war with Iran, and leading the effort is the same intelligence apparatus that conspired against him...MORE...
Joy failed them. The laughter was a little too loud to be genuine. All the joy was on the other side. Trump’s often vulgar humor started as a political consultant’s nightmare in 2016 but by 2024 not only had his initial admirers not grown weary of it, more of the fence-sitters and even detractors had been worn down. Because through the increasing madness prescribed by the ruling elite and their obvious disdain for us Trump’s persona, like his outsized confidence, wavered not a bit. Trump was stable, familiar, normal (achieving his opponents’ dreaded “normalization”) as his enemies became increasingly unstable, abnormal and relentless in their ongoing war on the familiar–no one recognizes the country they grew up in.
By 2024 the Democrats and progressive left had finished their unspoken transition from a class-based conspiracy of power–an elite faction conspiring with the economically disadvantaged to disempower the middle class–to its present conspiracy: an elite faction cultivating and conspiring with the psychologically damaged, to disempower all of us.
This is what we all see. This is why the Trump revolution succeeded. This is why the election is legitimate cause for celebration. But to think we will see it go away, with the mere election of a president, especially this president, is naive.
Trump enters office a lame duck, with no more elections to run. This only leaves him more susceptible to the designs of the cabal of “advisors” that will ultimately control him. These people, if drawn from elite ranks, will have no interest in the success or failure of his term and no ultimate interest in the fate of the country; they have other ideas and other loyalties. The high profile renegade heroes that joined the campaign–Robert Kennedy Jr, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard–are not going to be in the most crucial posts. It’s notable none of them, with the possible exception of Gabbard, who sold Trump as a peace candidate in apparent ignorance of Trump’s record and statements regarding Israel, dares challenge the capture of US foreign policy by the Jewish State. Even if Musk is somehow allowed to reform wasteful government and RFK to revolutionize public health–very long shots–the status quo order will have hardly deflected from its present course.
They’re already hard at work to maneuver Trump into war with Iran, and leading the effort is the same intelligence apparatus that conspired against him...MORE...
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