I was planning a post centered around a comparison between movie heroes like Bruce Lee and Donald Trump. Bruce Lee wins fights because gang members go at him one at a time.
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| Fists of Fury |
I was going to riff off the idea that a majority of Republican voters may be ready to move on from Trump, but the not-Trump vote is splintered among many. As of today Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, and Mike Pompeo show every sign of running. There will likely be more candidates. Trump can win states with 30% of the vote. Republican primary rules are winner-take-all. Trump can win because GOP candidates are all competing at the same time. It is the opposite of the strategy of the Bruce Lee movies, but the result is the same. They lose.
Gerald Murphy sent me a Guest Post. He uses different analogies to make the same point. Murphy taught high school English in Yreka, California for 35 years before moving across the border to Medford 10 years ago. He currently teaches various film and radio classes at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Southern Oregon University. Over the years, Murphy has written dozens of plays and musicals with productions in over forty countries, mostly in schools and community theaters.
Guest Post by Gerald Murphy
I can't stop him.
One of the card games my family enjoyed was “Hearts,” a game which involved a lot of strategy. Although the most popular strategy involved taking as few tricks as possible and thereby winning with the lowest score, you could reverse this strategy and “Shoot for the Moon.” This involved getting all the points possible, including the dangerous Queen of Spades. Whenever a player attempted this gambit, it was almost always evident to the other players, and there were many ways to stop this ploy. However, if you stuck your neck out for the other players, you dug yourself into a hole. And to avoid that fate, players would say “I can’t stop him” (or her) aloud, which allowed the moon-shooter to take a huge advantage and usually win the entire game.
We also enjoyed “Risk,” a board game which involved taking over the world with your armies. It took a lot of patience to play Risk, which could last three to four hours, but after the first hour or so at least one player would be seen building up enough strength to eventually wipe everyone else off the map. However, the other players had a way to defend themselves from this future onslaught. All they had to do was join together and attack the strongest player, leaving the weaker players alone. But who would be the one brave player to begin belling the cat? Or would they all play the “I can’t stop him” game?
By this time I’m sure most readers have no trouble seeing the connection between the games above and the 2016 election in which Trump’s adversaries, including Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz left Donald Trump alone to “Shoot the Moon.” Instead of ganging up on the vulgar game show host, they gave him a free pass, allowing him to run rough-shod over his last two opponents, Rubio and Cruz.
After the January 6th riots, which were ordered by Trump to deny Biden the presidency, most pundits saw the end of Trump’s political career. How could he possibly get away with such monumental treason, most of which was filmed live for hours on all our television stations? This was even worse than his “Grab them by the pussy” gaffe.
And so, Kevin McCarthy and others condemned the riots and condemned Donald Trump, the man responsible for this insult to our sacred institutions. He had finally gone too far. The man was toxic, and he would never recover from this debacle.
And then McCarthy changed his mind and made his pilgrimage to Florida to kiss the ring. Fox News doubled down on its hatred of Democrats and its worship of Trump. Except for a few lonely Republicans, the party marched lockstep to the same ugly beat of the MAGA drum. Could this be 2016 all over again? Have the Republicans lost all honor, all integrity, and all ethics?
There are some honorable Republicans. After all, the January 6 Committee gave us Liz Cheney. And Romney and McConnell occasionally murmur something that sounds like condemnation of Donald’s seditious behavior. But what I hear most from Republicans is the same tired phrase from the “Hearts” and “Risk” games. “I can’t stop him. I can’t stop him. I can’t stop him.”
17 comments:
Having worked under a vindictive narcissist for 20 years I understand being fearful of taking him on on your own. I saw many go under attempting to do so, until finally an almost as powerful person arose that many followed successfully. It’s about timing when taking on a scary person.
“There are some honorable Republicans. After all, the January 6 Committee gave us Liz Cheney. And Romney and McConnell occasionally murmur something that sounds like condemnation of Donald’s seditious behavior.”
Yes, but those few Republicans have been censured, primaried and/or dismissed as Whackos In Name Only. Even those willing to run against Trump have groveled before him. On the other hand, these demagogues and charlatans are no worse that the people who keep electing them. Some make excuses for them, as if they’re just poor, hapless victims of some mysterious elite (perhaps that cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles we keep hearing about) and shouldn’t be held to the same standards as those who can tell right from wrong.
In fact, the MAGA crowd loves Trump for the very reasons sane people find him so repulsive: he’s a lying, greedy, pussy-grabbing sociopath. Of all the available choices, his supporters voted for him because he best represents their values. As they say, in a democracy we get the government we deserve.
You Know Who is still facing a number of legal problems. Another factor is his wife. I can't imagine that she is very enthusiastic about another campaign and going back to Washington D.C.
At some point his health will catch up with him. He has an unhealthy lifestyle and he is only a few years behind Joe Biden, who has a healthy lifestyle and a very loving and supportive wife.
The tricky part of the political problem for potential Republican nominees is how to lead the MAGA base away from Donald Trump.
As far as I can see, the only Republican who has even a clue of how to do that is Ron DeSantis, who combines effective leadership and a demonstrated ability to win elections with an assertive and occasionally entertaining war on wokeness. It remains to be seen if DeSantis has what it takes to win MAGA over.
Or maybe some outside force will tip over the “game board“. Indictments? Health problems? Death? War with China? An economic crash triggered by crypto? A butterfly flapping its wings somewhere off the coast of West Africa? 😱
We are treating Trump two-dimensionally. We're are imagining a boxing ring. One candidate taking on another to the last one standing. We're in a new environment with Fox marshaling a full-effect battlefield. A predetermined strategy to enact a desired outcome. In this view, Biden's win is less a mystery after we've read the internal emails and messages between FOXs management and commentators. It is clear their on-air programming was pure theater to maintain viewers. Up to that point Trump never fought his opponents alone. Now we see he was the alpha in a pack of attackers. He appeared unbeatable. Look at the airtime and opinion editors ink dedicated to him. From the beginning in 2015 and his showy escalator ride into a staged applauding crowd, he appeared as the savior coming down from heaven to aid the mortals below. That was all theater. Trump never fought alone. Notice how he ran to the bunker when confronted by protestors. Notice also his anger at the Secret Service when he wasn't allowed to go and stand with the rioters attacking the Capitol, it denied him that graphic. Showing he hides when he's alone and plays the tough guy only when he has his army of lawyers, cronies, and hacks holding him up.
Trump had a minuscule following in the beginning and the fix was in. Now DeSantis is the FOX choice, let's see what happens to his lead after his book tour and see if Ron is able to generate the crowds. If he doesn't Trump, flawed as he is, will be the default setting.
The Former Occupant is no friend to women. But this month, in particular, we celebrate the lives and contributions of women and girls.
Your favorite bookseller and public library has many great books from which to choose. The National Women's History Alliance, which worked to establish Women's History Month, has a website and Facebook page. (Each year has a different women's history theme.)
In addition to reading about women's history, we also can ask the women in our lives about their own stories. We also can learn about the lives, accomplishments and contributions of our female relatives and ancestors by researching our genealogy and family histories.
Happy Women's Herstory Month!
Political genius consists of finding resonances in the electorate that are strong enough to be politically useful. Trump found a new one, fed energy into it, and rode the resulting wave into the presidency.
These resonances are not created by the media; they are created by the experiences of the people who make up the electorate. Blaming Fox News for Trump is like blaming meteorologists for a hurricane.
I like John F’s optimism, but polls show Trump beating DeSantis by a wide margin. Not that DeSantis would be much of an improvement, with his “war on woke” shamelessly pandering to Trump’s white nationalist base.
Republicans like to pretend their antipathy towards woke has nothing to do with race, but they’re only fooling themselves. Woke has everything to do with race by definition, although Republicans use it to signify anything they don’t like. What they don’t like boils down to diversity, equity, inclusion, Black history, our changing demographics and giving women control over their own bodies.
Of course, Republicans do have other equally important issues, such as Hunter Biden’s laptop and rewriting the history of Jan. 6. Meanwhile, Biden is trying to shore up our infrastructure and social programs. May the best man win.
Republicans like to pretend their antipathy towards woke has nothing to do with race, but they’re only fooling themselves. Woke has everything to do with race by definition...
Some examples of wokeness that have nothing to do with race:
* A college art teacher is fired for displaying a medieval painting that includes an image of Mohammed. The painter was a Muslim.
* James Bennett, an editor at the New York Times, was fired for authorizing the publication of an opinion piece by Tom Cotton, a Republican (gasp!) senator. A woke mob rose up on internal Slack channels that the cowardly management of the Times was powerless to resist.
It's true that many issues around wokeness have to do with race: opposition to the imposition of racial diversity quotas, for instance. But “having something to do with race” is not the same thing as being racist. When lawyers resist the dumbing down of the bar exam because “not enough” of certain minorities pass the test, they are supporting the maintenance of rigorous intellectual standards, not acting out of prejudice or hatred.
But those who want to impose the dictates of the secular pseudo-religion known as wokeness on the rest of us have a powerful weapon in their indiscriminate use of the r-word, and they will continue to use it in their ongoing efforts to shut down diversity of thought and freedom of speech.
The examples of wokeness that have nothing to do with race, provided above, have nothing to do with being woke. They are better examples of the effort by Republicans to take a word from the African American vernacular and turn it into a derogatory term. Sounds pretty racist to me.
Enquiring minds want to know:
If a benign Yiddish word were corrupted into a slur, would that be racist? "Yid" was once a compliment.
Who knows, maybe this could actually turn into a conversation.
The meanings of words tend to shift over time, so that people can talk about new things that happen. “Gay” used to mean happy and carefree. “Rap” used to mean a sudden sound, or maybe a criminal accusation. “Rock” was a hard object found in the physical environment.
As social justice extremism developed, there needed to be a word for it, and the meaning of “woke“ shifted to meet that need. Words don’t get “corrupted“; their meaning evolves to accommodate cultural developments. Calling this inevitable linguistic phenomenon “racist“ seems odd to me.
Republicans tried to twist 'liberal,' 'progressive' and 'social justice warrior' into derogatory terms. It didn't work. Now they're trying with 'woke.' It definitely is a corruption by those who find something objectionable about being aware of social inequities.
Words like “liberal” were not “corrupted” by propaganda from the right. The meaning of “liberal” shifted due to the lived experiences of people who experienced things like out of control crime resulting from liberal policies.
Right now, Democrats are losing more and more of the votes of Asian Americans, who are not pleased by the ceiling placed on their aspirations by liberal affirmative action policies that limit how many of their children can be admitted to Ivy League colleges. Democrats lost House seats in New York, partly because of liberal bail reform policies and the associated rise in crime levels.
Propaganda is not necessary when policies produce such negative consequences for ordinary voters. Liberal Lori Lightfoot did not lose in Chicago because of propaganda; she lost because under her leadership, crime spiraled out of control.
“ Propaganda is not necessary when policies produce such negative consequences for ordinary voters.”
How ironic that seems!
How do?
That was supposed to be, with regard to irony,
How so?
Sometimes iPhone autocorrect has too good ann opinion of its own opinions.
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