Taibbi on Donald Trump
Matt's latest article is mostly a broadside against Trump and his supporters, something that is getting repetitive, but there are some great points in it.
When the event was done, as the crowd of other seething Deplorables filed past them, they and a few others remained in their chairs, staring fatalistically at the empty stage.
The scene couldn't have been more poignant. Duped for a generation by a party that kowtowed to the wealthy while offering scraps to voters, then egged on to a doomed rebellion by a third-rate con man who wilted under pressure and was finally incinerated in a fireball of his own stupidity, people like this found themselves, in the end, represented by literally no one.
Not many people are shedding tears for the Republican voter these days, perhaps rightly so. But the sudden crash-ending of the Trump campaign only made official what these voters have suspected for years: They've been represented by an empty stage all along. Why not sit there and stare at it for a little longer?
There's an old Slavic saying about corruption: One thief sits atop another thief, using a third thief for a whip. The campaign trail is similarly a stack of deceptions, with each implicit lie of the horse race driving the next.
Lie No. 1 is that there are only two political ideas in the world, Republican and Democrat. Lie No. 2 is that the parties are violent ideological opposites, and that during campaign season we can only speak about the areas where they differ (abortion, guns, etc.) and never the areas where there's typically consensus (defense spending, surveillance, torture, trade, and so on). Lie No. 3, a corollary to No. 2, is that all problems are the fault of one party or the other, and never both. Assuming you watch the right channels, everything is always someone else's fault. Lie No. 4, the reason America in campaign seasons looks like a place where everyone has great teeth and $1,000 haircuts, is that elections are about political personalities, not voters.
These are the rules of the Campaign Reality Show as it has evolved over the years. The program is designed to reduce political thought to a simple binary choice and force more than 100 million adults to commit to one or the other. Like every TV contest, it discourages subtlety, reflection and reconciliation, and encourages belligerence, action and conflict.
Anyone who takes a close-enough look at how we run elections in this country will conclude that the process is designed to be regressive. It distracts us with trivialities and drives us apart during two years of furious arguments. It's a divide-and-conquer mechanism that keeps us from communicating with one another, and prevents us from examining the broader, systemic problems we all face together.
Trump, ironically, was originally a rebel against this process, the first-ever party-crasher to bulldoze his way past the oligarchical triad of donors, party leaders and gatekeeping media. But once he got in, he became the ultimate servant of the horse race, simultaneously creating the most-watched and most regressive election ever.
He was unable to stop being a reality star. Trump from the start had been playing a part, but his acting got worse and worse as time went on, until finally he couldn't keep track: Was he supposed to be a genuine traitor to his class and the savior of the common man, or just be himself, i.e., a bellicose pervert with too much time on his hands? Or were the two things the same thing? He was too dumb to figure it out, and that paralysis played itself out on the Super Bowl of political stages. It was great television. It was also the worst thing that ever happened to our electoral system.
Trump's shocking rise and spectacular fall have been a singular disaster for U.S. politics. Built up in the press as the American Hitler, he was unmasked in the end as a pathetic little prankster who ruined himself, his family and half of America's two-party political system for what was probably a half-assed ego trip all along, adventure tourism for the idiot rich.
That such a small man would have such an awesome impact on our nation's history is terrible, but it makes sense if you believe in the essential ridiculousness of the human experience. Trump picked exactly the wrong time to launch his mirror-gazing rampage to nowhere. He ran at a time when Americans on both sides of the aisle were experiencing a deep sense of betrayal by the political class, anger that was finally ready to express itself at the ballot box.
The only thing that could get in the way of real change – if not now, then surely very soon – was a rebellion so maladroit, ill-conceived and irresponsible that even the severest critics of the system would become zealots for the status quo.
In the absolute best-case scenario, the one in which he loses, this is what Trump's run accomplished. He ran as an outsider antidote to a corrupt two-party system, and instead will leave that system more entrenched than ever. If he goes on to lose, he will be our Bonaparte, the monster who will continue to terrify us even in exile, reinforcing the authority of kings.
If you thought lesser-evilism was bad before, wait until the answer to every question you might have about your political leaders becomes, "Would you rather have Trump in office?"
Trump can't win. Our national experiment can't end because one aging narcissist got bored of sex and food. Not even America deserves that. But that doesn't mean we come out ahead. We're more divided than ever, sicker than ever, dumber than ever. And there's no reason to think it won't be worse the next time.
Comments
"Represented by literally no one"
Well, they can join the club man. I don't know, many of us knew well before Trump that this political system was rigged, corrupt and ya, regressive. We're going downhill aren't we?
Personally I was calling for a boycott of the presidential election when I thought, and many others did, it would be Clinton vs. Bush. I wrote essays saying such. I know most people on here don't believe in boycotts of the political system, but whatever, we didn't need Trump to know this is all bullshit. He'll be just a small footnote in history.
But Taibbi is right, there's no reason to think it won't be worse next time.
But hey, only about 2 and a half years from now, we can do it again. We will do it again, that's the sad part.
Trump is a third rate con man compared to Obama, Taibbi
got that right; but the rest? Where's Matt talking about Clinton's horrible record? Where's the positive comments, or negative comments, on Stein. Looks to me like Taibbi wrote what his boss wanted him to write and didn't bother thinking about the crisis of democracy we're facing. He's done better. A blank page would have been better in my opinion.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
I very much appreciated Taibbi's reporting on the 'GB,'
and quoted him extensively. But, more and more, he appears to have become somewhat of a Dem Party shill (IMO). And that's a shame. He was one of my favorite writers--along with Hedges, Lindorff, Greenwald, etc.
BTW, duckpin, Taibbi is a [semi] regular on the Sunday Political Shows--along with Ellison, vanden Heuvel, Press, Begala, etc. And, as someone who rarely misses listening to those programs, I can assure folks that the roundtable
shillspanelists on these shows, generally back the accepted parameters of a neoliberal agenda, or they wouldn't be allowed on the programs. (We listen to the replays on XM Radio.)Mollie
“I believe in the redemptive powers of a dog’s love. It is in recognition of each dog’s potential to lift the human spirit and therefore– to change society for the better, that I fight to make sure every street dog has its day.”
--Stasha Wong, Secretary, Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD)
The SOSD Fantastic Four
Available For Adoption, Save Our Street Dogs, SOSD
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Thanks very much. Being tv-less for 15 or more years I
didn't know that Matt was a regular on the small screen. I am not surprised that vanden Heuvel is also which explains the law ebb of The Nation and why I stopped subscribing shortly after she became editor.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
No tv for seven years and counting
And it has been great.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Calvin Trillin calls them The Sabbath Gasbags
"Would you rather have Trump in office?"
YES.
Rolling Stone endorsed Clinton back in March of this year
I just read the endorsement. Reads to me like a press release from the Clinton campaign. Same arguments used by Clinton mouth pieces to bash Sanders. Re-invents Hillary as some sort of progressive. Interesting that Taibbi does not delve into the actual content of the speeches, but talks about Clinton's public persona in front of the masters of the universe who are "stalk holders". Sounds like some personality worship.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/hillary-clinton-for-president-...
If one thinks about her Wikileak speeches as campaign speeches, I would say my impression is that she gave to the masters of the universe is that "You can trust me to run the country for you."
I completely agree with your assessment, duckpin
Taibbi has drunk the Clinton Koolaid. He is apologetic for her when he says the Wikileaks emails showing her in a sympathic light. I actually almost upchucked when I read this paragraph.
It is not difficult to excoriate Trump for being who he is and that is crass, low brow, and unfit for public office. The issue is not really Trump but how we ended up with a Trump as one of the two candidates. Taibbi seems to want to blame the Republican party for its continuing hard right turn. But if we really look at what has happened to the American people, the root cause of much of the anger and unhappiness is neo-liberal policies, many of the most devastating were enacted under Bill Clinton.
I place as much, if not more blame for Trump upon the Democrats. In 2008, Obama won a mandate and had a majority in both the House and Senate. He squandered away that opportunity and the Democratic party as a whole refused to fight for the very issues that would have helped average Americans and prevented a Trump or a Cruz from being the Republican nominee. It would have forced both parties to move toward the left, but the Democrats were more concerned about helping Wall Street than they were about helping the American people. The anger has not gone away and the void created by the Democrats has allowed a Trump to move into it.
Taibbi blew it with this article.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Agree. Obama could have, and should have, followed through on
his campaign promises during the first year in office. I think it was an intentional squander and he never ever planned to enact his progressive promises. Rahm said Eff the UAW; Obama said Eff Youse All.(pardon my Irish)
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
gulfgal98
Once again, thank you. You have the ability to write, explain, in a way which always helps me learn something I thought I knew, but really didn't have the depth of understanding, until I've read your words.
THANK YOU.
Still surprising me how distressed, would say depressed, but it's way past that, I am about what's happening in our country, how we are destroying so much of the world. How did it ever reach this level of destruction.
Wow!
Thank you for this tremendous compliment, Caerus. I am humbled.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
And the foregone conclusion
that Trump has already lost...sound like a familiar tactic? We have another debate. We'll probably also have vastly different poll results between "official" "scientific" sources and the internet polls.
The Vampire Squid has eaten Matt Taibbi.
Remember this guy?
The same people who five years ago should have been in jail are now 'stakeholders in this vast historical transformation'.
God help us all.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Ugh.
another one bites the dust.
Truly the real-life equivalent of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.
You think you know these people, and one morning, wham! Gleichgeschaltet.
Are we plebs going to get a say in this
?
Oh, right, we're not 'stakeholderish' enough.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Indeed, they're 'stakeholders
Indeed, they're 'stakeholders' but the people of the world aren't.
The people of the world need to have their world transformed in every respect to suit the 'stakeholders' - their rights to enjoy their own lives and freedoms, their individual identities, traditions and democracies as they please, as free people, fail to further enrich the 'stockholders' and annoyingly limit abuses and therefore all must be bent instead to their purposes.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Is Donald Trump the one who made all these running dogs
…spin around and race back to the elite yelping piteously with their tails tucked up between their legs?
He did that to the nation's press? He single-handedly exposed them as cheap one-dimensional prostitutes for the Establishment?
Good.
I like that very much.
The Establishment so richly deserves Donald Trump for their President for the next four years to piss on all their corrupt and murderous plans to funnel the nation's revenues and wealth into their wars for Empire. While they cheerfully tighten the screw of austerity on the American people, crushing their last hopes.
I'd like to see nothing more than a Trump victory to stick it to these pathetic fuckers. May it come to pass.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Even if he loses...
Looks like Trumpism won't be going away any time soon.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
So Matt Taibbi agrees with Hillary that “we discovered Japan” ?
Or admires her for having said, “we have proof we bought [Hawaii]” ?
What Hillary Clinton privately told Goldman Sachs
Read segments of Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street speeches released by WikiLeaks
Sooo . . . bragging about getting away with grabbing p—y is repulsive . . .
But bragging about getting away with stealing a brown Polynesian people’s very country and culture out from under them is just so Yankee Doodle dandy.
The kingdom of Hawai'i was recognized internationally and
the kingdom had treaties with other countries. What the USA did was to invade the country; dispossess its people of their land; hand the land over for exploitation to corporations; and run the islands as a colony. Imperialism in other words.
Aren't Goldwater Girls allowed to study history?
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Oh, I am sure they study parts of it.
The parts they want to emulate, and the parts they need to suppress.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
On leadership by Umair Haque
I thought I'd toss this URL in here. We seem to be talking about a failure of leadership.
The essay addresses the concept of 'genuine values' and it's role in shaping ideology. Not the other way around.
Someone here linked Umair's essay on creeping fascism brought on by decades of western economic stagnation. I've been reading his stuff ever since.
https://umairhaque.com/the-tension-of-true-leadership-8d66c0e504ce#.r241...
I want a Pony!
That Taibbi sure can write
Although about Trump I found this article accurately describes the election process. In real life I am surprised that so many educated decent and smart people I know still look at this whole farce of a political system as Red vs. Blue, good vs. evil, them against us. Even though they must know what the Obama administration has done and is doing they seem unable to let go of being a fan. A woman I know, like and admire keeps posting fan style videos of both Michele and Obama. It's like she already nostalgic about the better con man and his family.
Lie No. 2 is that the parties are violent ideological opposites, and that during campaign season we can only speak about the areas where they differ (abortion, guns, etc.) and never the areas where there's typically consensus (defense spending, surveillance, torture, trade, and so on). Lie No. 3, a corollary to No. 2, is that all problems are the fault of one party or the other, and never both. Assuming you watch the right channels, everything is always someone else's fault. Lie No. 4, the reason America in campaign seasons looks like a place where everyone has great teeth and $1,000 haircuts, is that elections are about political personalities, not voters.
These are the rules of the Campaign Reality Show as it has evolved over the years. The program is designed to reduce political thought to a simple binary choice and force more than 100 million adults to commit to one or the other. Like every TV contest, it discourages subtlety, reflection and reconciliation, and encourages belligerence, action and conflict.
Anyone who takes a close-enough look at how we run elections in this country will conclude that the process is designed to be regressive. It distracts us with trivialities and drives us apart during two years of furious arguments. It's a divide-and-conquer mechanism that keeps us from communicating with one another, and prevents us from examining the broader, systemic problems we all face together.
This same black and white binary version of reality gets imposed on their world view as in 'Putin did it', and war is peace, ignorance is strength and all our enemies here and globally are to blame. As Democrat's a lot of these people claim to be moderates. What is moderate about bombing and killing the 'other' who is a danger to our interests? What's moderate about any of this looting, pillaging and burning up the planet? Is abolishing the universal laws that protect people from this madness moderate? What's moderate about a global neoliberal economy that causes massive income inequity and offers no justice or equality anywhere to the 99%?
The 2 party system has to go
Only the US, Jamaica and Malta have this type of "democracy".
The electoral college was created to please the slavery states and 62% to 70% want the POTUS elected by popular vote. Of course we would neet ballotage or an instant runoff system.
Gerrymandering and Citizens United have to go too.
We are now an oligarchy according to a Princeton study.
BTW, this year there may be a "faithless electors" revolt;
The political revolution continues
It's rapidly going... toward a one party system.
Oh, maybe that isn't the direction you had in mind!
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
The last *three* times we had "just one party",
we suddenly developed a second one.
The Federalist Party was the Only Party for about one electoral term. Enter the Anti-Federalists (soon known as the Democratic-Republicans).
The Federalist Party made itself obsolete.
The Democratic-Republicans had it all their own way for maybe two electoral terms, and then shattered.
Squabbling pieces led to John Quincy Adams' single term (the House had to pick him because he fell short of a majority).
The fragments coalesced into a Democratic Party (led by Andrew Jackson) and a Whig Party (led by various people).
The Whig Party tore itself apart over the slavery question.
Enter the brand-new abolitionist Republican Party....
We only think there can't be a new Party, because there hasn't been one in our lifetimes, or our parents' lifetime, or our grandparents' lifetime. But these are weird times, and things that "couldn't possibly happen in our time" have been happening.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
It would be nice to have another party (other parties)
But the system just reduces itself to just the same old winner takes all/binary choice.
Blue or Green (see Byzantium........... not that it did the Emperors any good).
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Blue or Green
Nika! Nika! Nika! (01/13/532 CE)
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Taibbi and Hedges big pictures. Storm is coming.
I would say pretty much most pundits are reductive in their thinking about about the election. In many cases it really seems to be about social affiliations. Saw that with Sanders and Clinton. The issue is that Sander supporters were simply not the good sort of people. Same with Trump--the deplorables. Of course like in Brexit, these concerns cover up major issues.
Taibbi thinks the electoral system is broken. But that is just the symptom. I think Hedges has it right. A Clinton victory will just another version of Trump but with slicker and softer phony language.
I might edit the first sentence to include Sanders along with Trump as being disappeared by the parties. However, more importantly, the people behind both Trump and Sanders will not go away. They will not be absorbed and marginalized within the parties. There have been on the democrat side attempts to marginalize and neuter Sander supporters by encouraging them to continue a fool's errand of Bernie's "revolution" but of course only inside the confines of the party. As one pundit, may have been Hedges, you cannot have a revolution in a reactionary party--or something like that.
I kept thinking that if Trump wasn't so stupid, that he would easy beat Clinton even with the baggage of his past. The current Trump could never be a Hitler. However as Hedges states, there will come around somebody to take Trump's place and he (most likely a man) will have all the "tools" to pull off the rise of a real fascism.
President Trump Is Our Best Chance To Survive
Poor Matt has jumped aboard the Washington Consensus Trump Hysteria Bandwagon. If Trump wins both parties will block anything Trump attempts. Neither party wants a two term Trump presidency. Both parties will do everything in their power to ensure he oversees a failed presidency.
Gridlock becomes the best possible outcome for America. Think about four years of a military political stalemate between Congress and the President. Even if the warjacks want another war, who gets credit for keeping America safe? The Commander in Chief. Neither party will want to allow Trump to be a successful President or Commander In Chief.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Dear FSM, NO! Jill Stein is
Dear FSM, NO! Jill Stein is the only non-corporate candidate running, and the only one who would actually NOT impose the corporate coups labelled as 'trade deals'
but which illegally and unconstitutionally offshore law/government into a corporate/billionaire-only 'trade court' determining what domestic law will be permitted by that corporate/billionaire court, where the public interest has no standing, in each unwittingly/unwillingly betrayed country, by the single criteria of maximized self-anticipated future profits of all of thousands of involved corporations and billionaires
'legally' making everything from unsafe workplaces, financial markets, banking institutions, food and other products to unlimited industrial pollution, the reckless exposure of the public and environment to any potentially cost-saving/profitable hazard further enriching The Right People and the privatization of all public property mandatory
to avoid the public being immediately sued into bankruptcy (and the additional clutches of international finance) by thousands of corporate/billionaire rulers each suing for hundreds of millions or hundreds of billions of dollars in each case,
as it's claimed in this audacious illegal and unconstitutional scam that the public of each country in each case has been 'legally' made responsible for supplying those maximized self-anticipated future profits to ALL of these thousands of corporations regardless of anything else - as long as anyone and anything survives to be drained for profit.
This is why the traitorous public servants involved plan to pass the TPP and other Fast-Tracked corporate coups right after the election - because they believe that the Clintons, for whom the election is rigged, will protect them from the legal consequences of this appalling conspiracy, should any non-corrupt court manage to get hold of them. The Clintons aren't great at keeping their word, though, are they? And their paymasters will have no further need of any of the traitors they used by that point.
The global conventional military war-crimes are evidently intended to subjugate those countries small enough that the conspirators believe they can be taken by force, while those capable of defending themselves are to be nuked.
It seems obvious to me that the global hostile corporate take-over forms the reason for all of this endless US political interference, invasion and illegal military attack 'to protect American business interests' and for the US training and arming of 'terrorists who must be fought everywhere' and why so many innocents are murdered by drones and bombs in their own freaking countries in order to terrorize the population into providing more of a 'terrorist' excuse as cover for this.
So Jill Stein is the only survivable candidate currently running - and she's doing much better than is admitted.
The Indies form the largest voting group and with them alone, she'd win on votes - the Libertarian supports the TPP corporate coup, probably through simply knowing nothing about it and thinking it's some actual trade deal, rather than a corporate/billionaire coup making democratic government effectively illegal.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Trump is bad.
Clinton is far worse. Perhaps Tabibi has forgotten that simple fact.
On the one hand, neoliberal Dems
excoriate Trump in the harshest possible terms, warning that he poses a very serious threat to responsible government. On the other hand, they present him as a ridiculous loser, whose campaign has imploded, and who has no chance whatsoever of winning the election. I don't see how both of these propositions can be true - it's either one or the other.
native
Once again
American citizens are taxed with no representation. And history has a tendency to repeat itself, does it not?