May You Live in Interesting Times ~ Ancient Curse (Part Two)

Editorial, The Week in Review – Analysis, Commentary, Opinion

08.20.2016

May You Live in Interesting Times ~ Ancient Curse

Part Two

Donald Trump; the T-Rump is at it again. He is giving the media the razzle dazzle, doing everything he can to suck up every bit of the attention the entire media establishment has to offer.

He thinks he is making things interesting. Instead, he is writing a tragedy. The American people are losing, everyday his bid for the presidency continues. He hurts our hope in democracy, as he proves old Socrates, and Plato correct; democracy is the worst of government because it panders to, and devolves toward the lowest common denominator. 

It was time for damage control. to cap off a dismal two weeks, in which T-Rump was plummeting in the polls: he fired or demoted the campaign staff that had been trying to orchestrate a turn-around for him. T-Rump decided to blame those who had been counseling him to get him to moderate his behavior. He blamed them, not himself, for his precipitous slip in the polls. T-Rump decided to blame them for attempting to present him in a different, more serious light, rather than accept the blame for his own reckless comments during the same period of time.

He received positive press every time he stepped up to the podium to give a focused speech, every time he managed to “stay on message.” It is clear that the task was awkward for him, but the media narrative at those points was always positive. The narrative would lift into a discussion of a T-Rump turn around, but then he would falter. In that same period of time he would also go off script. He engaged in a small minded, mean fight with the parents of an Army captain, a Muslim, the son of immigrants, who gave his life in combat for the United States, in Iraq, in 2004. He fought with them, he belittled them. It was contemptible.

Senior Republicans, office holders and other party members began to abandon him, to publicly declaim him.

T-Rump called for his supporters, for the group of them who are vocal proponents of the (loosely interpreted) second amendment; he called on them to take action against Hillary Clinton, or the judges she might appoint, should she win the election to the Presidency. He lied about her intentions regarding gun-control, and he tacitly called for her to be assassinated by the “second amendment people”.

He spent days telling his crowds that President Barrack Obama, and his opponent Hillary Clinton, were the founders of the terrorist group ISIS. He repeated these charges to his supporters, over, and over, and over. These comments were met with incredulity, even by those who are friendly to him. With each of these blunders his standing in the polls dropped. He tried to distance himself from his own words, pretending it was all just sarcasm, but who could take him seriously.

Instead of taking responsibility for this himself; looking to his own words and deeds as the explanatory events leading to those falling numbers. T-Rump blamed the people that were attempting to modulate his behavior; those counselling change. Then he hired the media king of all bluster to take over his campaign; the chief of Breitbart news, Stephen Bannon. This is an indication that T-Rump has no desire to get serious, he believes in his eventual, predictable, inevitable defeat. And now he wants to light it up, no matter how much harm he does to our institutions in the process.

A scorched earth strategy is underway. T-Rump will destroy everything he sees in his losing bid for the presidency.

America will pay the price.