Trumpily

During the time we were away from home, last week, we saw more politically-slanted TV fare than has been the norm all through this year. I've avoided all politics on TV, apart from the primary debates and results programmes, minus the waffle from MSNBC and CNN which followed them.

Ye gods! How can people watch this garbage? Most of what I saw was all Trump all the time - not pro- but supposedly avidly anti- with the very occasional neutral-sounding commentary.

TV, newspapers, and much political material on the internet are in full Trump mesmeric mode. They use their time putting all his many and varied faults on display, front and centre, over and over and over again, leaving Hillary Clinton's many and varied faults, and the dangers inherent in her presidency mostly hidden, relegated to minor, semi-critical articles in the backwaters. Major space and air-time is being taken up by Trump, Trump, Trump. (Note: I haven't ventured to watch or read on overt Republican sites or TV channels where, of course, there'd be a different emphasis.)

Thought provoking piece by Andrew O'Hehir:
Trump Is Channeling a Deep-Seated American Urge Toward Self-Destruction
Is Trump sabotaging himself? Wrong question — he's channeling a deep-seated American urge toward self-destruction.

SNIP

Donald Trump’s suicide mission is not personal, first of all. If I had to guess, I would say that he wants to be president but doesn’t know why, and has no idea what he would do with the office if he wins. Trump wishes only for his own glorification; he isn’t intelligent enough or complicated enough to yearn for his own destruction. Whether that translates in practice to a desire to lose the election, with the side benefit of endangering democracy by claiming that the system is corrupt and the results were rigged — well, that sounds like a pretty good guess, but as I said earlier I don’t know and I don’t really care. Trump’s suicide mission is ultimately about something much larger than his own presidential campaign, and also much larger than demographic clichés about the declining white majority.

America is experiencing a health crisis on an enormous scale — a crisis that is simultaneously physical, psychological and spiritual and is hardly ever understood in holistic terms. If Trump is the most prominent symptom of this systemic disorder at the moment, he is not its cause or even its leading indicator. For starters, this crisis encompasses epidemic rates of obesity and epidemic rates of suicide, dramatic evidence of a wealthy country that is literally killing itself. It’s about a nation of worsening social isolation and individualized info-bubbles and pathological delusion, a nation that spends more per capita on healthcare than any other major Western power to achieve worse outcomes, and where Baconator Fries are $1.99 at Wendy’s.

Trump, his campaign, and his supporters, are often accused of authoritarianism. A piece at Counterpunch, by Bernard Weiner , yesterday is an example: Trump and Authoritarianism. Most will accept what they read or hear on this, and could be right to do so. Yet the Clinton campaign is not innocent in this same regard. The following comes from a report by a Democratic delegate who attended the Democrats' convention. It's a single anecdote, but smacks of the general atmosphere.

I gave one woman, a Clinton delegate, a sign that said ‘I Support Palestinian Human Rights.’ She wanted to wear it, but her friend said, ‘We can’t do that, we’re not allowed to.’ They don’t want to question party leadership on any level. Even the simple thing of taking a button and putting it on your body is a big no-no for them. I didn’t think the party was this authoritarian.

From commentary about a different report by another Dem. delegate, taken from naked capitalism website

3.14e-9
August 8, 2016 at 8:42 am

Re: Bernie delegates speak out, it’s all in this one line:

[Party leaders] assume that we’re irrelevant for the long term.

They get told to shut up, their signs are confiscated, they’re threatened with revocation of their credentials, the Clinton delegates treat them like a communicable disease, and they know the Democratic Party will never accept them. And still, they’re going to vote for her, because we must defeat Trump.

I’ve read tweets and F[ace]B[ook] posts from by a couple of other delegates, one of whom had her arm twisted so hard by a Hillary supporter that it left her with a huge bruise. The entire time, she was surrounded by security, who even followed her into the ladies room.

But if we don’t defeat Trump, he’ll turn our democracy into a fascist dictatorship.

Carolinian:
August 8, 2016 at 9:21 am

Sounds like Sanders delegates were getting the roughing up that so upset many when it was applied to protestors at Trump rallies. Who’s the fascist again?

In other news: things I learn by reading online:

TL;DR, or tl;dr = short for "too long; didn't read". Internet slang to say that some text being replied to has been ignored or as a signifier for a summary of an online post or news article.

The abbreviation is based on the principle that, if the writer does not invest the time to convey their message concisely, the reader is justified not investing the time to read it. Alternately, it might mean that there is insufficient material of value or interest to justify the time required to read it. (Wikipedia)

If this post rates a tl;dr - what can I say?!

(ME: By the way, Wiki, it should be "alternatively", not alternately.)

And:

Betteridge's Law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist, although the principle is much older. As with similar "laws" (e.g., Murphy's law), it is intended as a humorous adage rather than always being literally true.