The thoughtful and observant Mr. Porretto suggests that Donald Trump's candidacy has a certain "bread and circuses" aspect to it and that the elites have exploited Trump to distract the American people. This will have unpredictable results given the existence of a burgeoning "let it burn" community among our fellow Americans.
I don't see the hand of the elites in Trump's appearance and rise that Porretto does. Where the media bread and circuses are concerned, however, that hand is very visible indeed. Behold "America the Propositional Nation," even though not one person in a million can say what those propositions are for sure. But it -- and "diversity" -- are the war cries of just about every media (and academic and political) luminary. Where movies, sitcoms, commercials, and new rooms are concerned, all look like a meeting of either the United Nations General Assembly or of the annual convention of the National Organization for Wymyn. The media imperative is to portray an America that doesn't exist. Yet. It's much worse than that, as you know.
Trump's just not the kind of man to waste his time playing such games, especially as he's not shown much interest in broad public issues before, so far as I know, with the exception of his toying with the fraudulence of Obama's "birth certificate" and his earlier warnings about immigration and the national debt. It's quite a stretch to think that Trump's playing the role either of witting shill or unwitting puppet. Really?
In a certain late 1980s (?) book, whose author and title I can't recall now, the author suggested that the unwashed had a deal with the smart set. The latter could dabble in national affairs and play soldier all they want provided they don't fisk with how the former lived their lives.
Call it The Invasion of the Dweebs. Twerps, who go full-rhapsody at some Bartokian screechfest or a punk rock guitar smash, are calling the shots in the south 40 of American life and it's not been going well. Cue the Marlboro Man. For God's sake, cue the Marlboro Man!
There is clearly a bread and circuses flavor to modern American life. In 1966, Carroll Quigley, in his Tragedy and Hope: A History of World in Our Time wrote:
All of these ideas [intuition rather than analysis, existentialism], reflecting the disjointed malaise of the century, permeated the outlook of the period and left it hungry for meaning, for identity, for some structure or purpose in human experience. Insanity, neurosis, suicide, and all kinds of irrational obsessions and reactions filled increasing roles in human life. Speed, alcohol [and drugs], sex, coffee [?], and tobacco screened man off from living, injuring his health, stultifying his capacity to think, to observe, or to enjoy life . . . . As his capacity to live or to experience life dwindled, he sought to reach it by seeking more vigorous experiences that might penetrate the barriers surrounding him. The result was mounting sensationalism. In time, nothing made much impression unless it was concerned with shocking violence, perversion, or distortion.
The duplicity, pusillanimity and passivity of the Republicans after the 2014 elections really WERE that 4th of July Orange Death Blam Shower blazing in the sky for all of us that politics are a pointless exercise, leaving only the dog-in-the-manger option to the civic-minded voter.
Not that anyone with the unbridled, official discretion greater than a dog catcher's seems to notice, mind you. Ethnic and racial inundation, globalism, tra-la-la fiscal fiddling, and full-tilt pursuit of fisk-you socialism ARE the present flight plan . . . and ten tons of cautionary, common sense evidence suggesting a different course, delivered every day to every inbox and browser on the planet, bounces off like a tennis ball hurled at a tank.
The productive, sane segment of the populace see Trump for what he ISN'T – a slack-jawed, pudgy, sellout, fund-raising, tanned, coifed, mewling, dissembling, obfuscating place-holding sack of baloney. Some posit that Trump is some kind of a shill for Mrs. Rodham or that's he's being supported by some cabal of the Deep State. On which points (including the B&C one) I note simply that the elite mismanagers of this once-great experiment in self government ought to contemplate the wisdom in the phrase "too clever by half." As H.G. Wells observed, in The Shape of Things to Come:
The whole world system heretofore had been sustained by the general good behavior of common men, by the honesty and punctuality of clerks, workers of every sort, traders, professional men.General security depended upon habitual decent behaviour in the street and on the countryside. But the common man behaved well because he had faith that his pay was a safe, if sometimes a scanty, assurance of a certain comfort and dignity in his life. He imagined an implicit bargain between himself and society that he should be given employment and security in exchange for his law-abiding subordination, and that society would keep faith with his savings.
He assumed that the governments would stand by the money they issued and see that it gave him the satisfactions it promised him. He was not a good boy for nothing. Nobody is.
The elite have a normalcy bias of their own and that is that the "common man" will continue to be a good boy.
However . . . .
The appearance of the Tea Party out of nowhere, the surge in popularity of Trump, and the well-developed and increasing public understanding of
- public debt,
- unfunded liabilities top and bottom,
- the crime and unbreakable dysfunction of the black "community" and its "leadership,"
- open borders fanaticism,
- MSM dishonesty and manipulation,
- Muslim savagery and commitment to subversion and treachery,
- Muslim "refugee" resettlement,
- mad off-shoring and outsourcing of manufacturing and services,
- monetary blindness,
- strategic imbecility, and
- Supreme Court betrayal
It's clear the world is in the last throes of the failed socialist utopian experiment of which our educated classes and many willing citizens are so enamored. Further economic deterioration, especially, the squeeze on the middle class and unemployed citizens displaced by cheap illegal alien labor, will act like a catalyst for the arrival of America 2.0.
Think "inflection point" in our lifetime, but without the A/C, the buttered popcorn, or the special effects.
Just for clarity's sake, Colonel: While it's possible that the political kingmakers encouraged the Trump candidacy, it's more likely that they're merely pleased with its effect on national attention to the campaign. It's more probable yet that the media are tickled to death by it, and are willing to stoke that furnace for as long as there's fuel to feed it.
ReplyDeleteEvery "circus," in the Roman fashion, needs both a hero and a villain. In that regard our current political circus closely resembles professional wrestling. Perhaps it's a bit ironic that Trump should be a hero to some but a villain to others, but it's a big electorate.
Copy that, Francis. The exposure he's gotten in the media is extraordinary. I think the media think he's an "oddity" -- as in odd like the opinions of normal people -- and that some giant misstep or revelation will deliver him into their hands. Still, it's hard if not impossible to ignore him hence the growing reality that the elites and the media have the proverbial tiger by the tail.
ReplyDeleteThese are unusual times. Zero Hedge has an article about Greece today in which it is pointed out that the government is preserved from a no-confidence vote by a mere one vote. That is emblematic of just about everything else. The too-clever-by-half phenomenon may be the operative one now. Over a century of fiddling by the beautiful people has left a trail of human and economic wreckage. The iron laws of arithmetic are knocking on the doors and windows everywhere.
Better quit now before the hyperbole police start asking too many questions.