… At times, I sometimes think I’m living in a weird remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. If you’ve seen any of the umpteen versions, you know the pattern. Someone you know or love goes to sleep one night and appears the next day to be the exact same person you always knew.
Except.
Except they’re different, somehow. They talk funny. They don’t care about the same things they used to. It’s almost like they became Canadian overnight — seemingly normal, but off in some way. Even once-friendly dogs start barking at them. …
I live in constant fear that I will run into Kevin Williamson, Charlie Cooke, or Rich Lowry and they will start telling me that Donald Trump is a serious person because he’s tapping into this or he’s willing to say that. I imagine my dog suddenly barking at them uncontrollably. … I’ll say, “I’m sorry Rich, I don’t know what got into her.”
And I can just hear the Lowry-doppelganger replying, “When Mr. Trump is president, dogs will behave or they will pay a price. Just like Paul Ryan and Michelle Fields.” “Lowry you bastard! You went to sleep! Why!? You went to sleep and now you’re gone!” …
Yesterday was an important day in the election campaign and not because of anything said by the gullible old Mr. Carson.
The riot started by the terrorist Bill Ayers and Black Lives Mater criminals at the Chicago Trump rally will function as this year’s Reichstag Fire. Support for Herr Trump will increase sharply as Republicans on the fence break in favor of the charismatic buffoon. They hate Ayers and the rioters and Ayers and the rioters hate Trump.
Meanwhile Hillary has shockingly committed the unpardonable sin. Trying to be gracious for the first time in her life, she recounted that Nancy Reagan had been sympathetic to the old homosexuals who in the 80s were giving each other AIDS as often as sorority sisters give each other wedding gifts. This of course was the worst heresy to the modern perverts, and it is not clear what Hillary can do to redeem herself.
Trump has already made major inroads into the “idiot vote” which has long been a Democrat staple. Now he has an opening to pick up a share of the pervert vote.
On yesterday’s politics thread, Donna said we got out of the sixties unscathed.
We didn’t.
The sixties made a permanent change in our culture. I just watched it as much as I could.
I wasn’t part of it because we were in survival mode at the time.
But during the sixties is when church membership started dropping, movies became raunchy, (thought I took Elvera to the first movies we attended together, when we went to see “Sound of Music” and “My Fair Lady”.)
Men stopped being gentlemen and women stopped being ladies.
Sunday became a big shopping day. And they advertised “I’m shopping at K-Mart this Thanksgiving.”
Racial unrest became violent. The corrections needed to be made because there was lots of unjust laws and customs, but it became a business for some who make a living by stirring up trouble.
The ultimate outcome? Rush put it succinctly when said, “The problem is that our children are being taught by kids who threw rocks at the police in the sixties.”
john Adams had a lot of germane remarks to make about politics and people. Here’s one:
Human passions unbridled by morality and religion…would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
We were just discussing that last night. The eighteen year old in rebellion has come up with quite the potty mouth and does not hesitate to watch where she uses it. Several older people have told me they called her on it. Anyway, her seventeen year old brother said, “I admit I have used some of the words at times, but she is way beyond me.” We talked about how it used to be that boys would use language like that and some men but not around women, children, or polite men. Now the boys are still careful but the girls and women can be extremely foul mouthed. They have been set free from the restrictiveness of being ladies and get to be…..something else.
Mumsee, I know you know this, but you need to get across to her the opinion boys have of girls who talk like that.
They assume, without question that the woman who says it does it. With the same care she uses it.
Then women complain if they are assaulted.
The guys assume they are asking for it.
We have tried. Her brother has tried. Their other brother, the one we tried to adopt but he left at fourteen and then got seriously into drugs and spent a lot of time in jail and juvie, says he believes she is the most likely of the three here, to follow him and their oldest brother into drugs. He has also tried to get her back on track. She will make her own decisions.
But the point is, since the sixties, that has been thrown to the winds as the women and girls are free to do what they want, not realizing they are actually putting themselves in prison.
“unscathed” was not a good term to use. I meant the internal violence stopped after what had been several years of fierce demonstrations and assassinations. The political order, such as it was, did seem to return to some kind of order and normalcy.
But, of course, the culture was going through a great upheaval that has had lasting effects. That’s why I also mentioned in that same comment that when historians look back many years from now, the political violence & tension in the ’60s will very possibly be seen as connected to what our political system is experiencing now.
And as has been noted by many, politics follows culture — so our culture has given rise to what we see now in our political leadership. Grump.
I knew an anthropology professor who said many of these things really got their start in the 1950s, not the ’60s. They bloomed in the 1960s though as those radical ideas of the so-called “beat” generation of that era began to go more mainstream. The youth of the ’60s took it from there, and on and on. And here we are.
And the youth generation of the ’60s also was very large, which gave it even more impact.
We see a similarly large “millennial” generation today, of course, so we can expect changes going on now on college campuses (especially the anti-free speech movement) to have a greater impact as it makes its way into the mainstream (“political correctness”).
Sanders does not even understand his white whale, the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. It ended prohibitions against independent (not coordinated with candidates) political advocacy by corporations and unions. It had nothing to do with what Bloomberg could have done, spend his own money on himself.
Politicians have been doing this since at least 1757, when George Washington supplied voters with 144 gallons of whiskey and other drink, enough to amply lubricate each of the 307 voters he persuaded in winning a seat in Virginia’s House of Delegates. This year, campaign spending on whiskey for voters would be welcomed by them as an anesthetic.
____________________________
The March 15 winner-take-all primaries in Florida and Ohio have been billed as make-or-break for the Republican candidates still holding out hope that they can topple Donald Trump. But those contests are also make-or-break for Trump, and for the Republican Party: They will determine whether there’s chaos or a coronation at the Cleveland convention.
If Trump can win both states, he’s on a glide path to earning a majority of delegates ahead of the July 18 convention. The only way to dethrone him at that point would be for the GOP to throw out its existing convention rules. A move that dramatic won’t happen. It would divide and destroy a party that has always prided itself on adhering to rules.
But if Trump doesn’t win both states, the GOP is likely to find itself in Cleveland with no candidate above the 1,237-delegate majority needed to claim the nomination. If that happens, the Republican Party’s own rules lock in a quagmire in Cleveland—and likely a multi-ballot, no-holds-barred convention.
The craziness will unfold in stages, with more delegates increasingly freeing up to vote for whomever they like as the process advances. All that puts a huge premium on an obscure and intricate competition happening right now in each state—the selection of the actual delegates. Any campaign not waging a major, if under-the-national-radar, effort to get its supporters elected as delegates will come up short in Cleveland. …
____________________________________
Ben Carson’s decision to endorse GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump divided his supporters, with many expressing shock and anger over the move on social media.
“Can’t believe you chose to support the one candidate who mocks God and is definitely not a Christian. Very disappointed in you and have lost much respect,” one supporter wrote on Carson’s Facebook page on Friday. …
Carson has been a star in conservative circles since his 2013 speech at the National Prayer Breakfast criticizing President Obama.
Many supporters, even those who expressed initial shock at the endorsement, though, voiced their continued support for the soft-spoken retired neurosurgeon who ended his White House bid last week.
Carson sought to explain his endorsement of Trump in a note posted to his Facebook account where he argued that the businessman represented a deviation from the nation’s current direction of “uncertainty” and “ruination.”
The post received a mixed response, with more than 60,000 Facebook likes. Another 7,000 were angered by the post, 5,000 loved it and 2,700 were saddened, according to Facebook’s new reactions. …
______________________________________
“I don’t understand being ‘disappointed’ in Carson as opposed to two other reactions I think more logical, but see less often:
1. Consider that maybe, just maybe, Carson knows what he’s doing (after all he knows Trump, and we only know of him via a media which hates him)- and maybe, since your guy likes Trump, consider you might have been wrong about Trump…”
Reminds me of Mumsee’s wise comment yesterday, especially the part in bold (emphasis mine): “I have been a Carson supporter and admirer from the start. I believe he is a man of integrity. He knows Trump a lot better than I do and if he sees hope there, I will start looking for it. Perhaps Trump has had his eyes opened, we shall see. I am not a Trump supporter but am a Carson supporter.”
Sorry, Mumsee I never thought Carson had any credibility and his Trump endorsement confirms it.
Clinton tried to burnish her leftist credentials versus Sanders and failed miserably. After claiming she had no clue where Sanders was when she was advocating universal health care in 92 and 93, the Sanders campaign released a picture of Sanders standing behind her in 1992 and a copy of a letter Hilary sent to Sanders thanking him for his support.
The NYT has an article on the geography of Trump support. The top indicators of Trump support 1. white with no high school diploma 2. report “American” as ancestry on US Census 3. live in a mobile home. 4. blue collar old economy job 5. From an area/family which supported George Wallace in 1968.
I never understood why someone would protest and interrupt an opponent’s rally. Protest outside but inside, its counter-productive.
The comment by Anonymous shows why Carson’s endorsement of Trump is so harmful just as the endorsements of Trump by Falwell, Jr. and Pastor Jeffress were also harmful.
Personally, if Cruz pulled out and endorsed Sanders or if Reagan rose from the dead and endorsed Trump, I would not give any credence to their endorsements. Instead I would be extremely disappointed that a man (or a corpse) whom I respected had made such a foolish endorsement.
However, some people are not confident in their own judgment or knowledge, and thus value (and may follow) the endorsement of someone they really respect. Ben Carson: Fine man, good hand eye coordination, bad judgment.
Here is why people interrupt someone else’s rally:
1. The someone else may (as Sanders did to the Black Lives Mater women in Seattle) just hand you his microphone, let you pontificate, and then just “walk away” as the Humongous told the people to do in Road Warrior; or
2. The someone else may (like Trump) cancel his own rally and make you a liberal hero.
I don’t like Trump — and worry (a lot) about his authoritarian/demogogue-style remarks — but I’m a little wary of the all-out Hitler comparisons.
Liberals have definitely latched on to this and are acting and reacting accordingly. And that can be dangerous in its own rite. As in no-holds-barred to stop him?
And as for the demonstrations and whose “fault” it is:
It’s so much more nuanced .than has been portrayed by the politicians … Granted, Trump’s rhetoric has been over the top. He needs to tone it down. Seriously. But blaming the violence caused by demonstrators solely (or even mostly) on him absolves future protestors who try to shut down rallies. It kind of says, “well, they were provoked, so what do you expect?”
Similarities and differences between Hitler and Trump:
Similarities:
1. Both were effective demagogues.
2. Both were most popular among the lower-middle class.
3. Both used unpopular groups as scapegoats for their nation’s problems.
4. Both promised to restore their nation’s greatness by aggressively dealing with other countries.
5. Neither was an orthodox Christian or an active churchgoer though both had some Christian supporters.
6. Both were amoral in their personal sexual behavior.
7. Both arose at a time when some of their opponents were socialists and/or communists.
8. The supporters of both engaged in violent confrontations with violent opponents.
9. Their language sometimes encouraged violence by supporters.
10. Each arose when perversion was rampant and orthodox Christianity was in decline.
11. Each showed clear signs of megalomania.
12. Each sensed weakness in an opponent and ruthlessly exploited
that weakness. (Think Bush as Chamberlain.)
Differences.
1. Hitler started as a soldier; then became a politician. Trump started as a rich heir; then became a businessman/con man and an entertainer.
2. Trump’s speeches were full of vulgarities and profanity.
3. Hitler took over a tiny political party and built it in his image. Trump is hijacking a large existing party.
I don’t really think Trump will start a World War or murder millions, but most Germans in 1933 didn’t think Hitler would do those things.
I really see Trump as a combination of Hitler and Bozo the Clown.
The big puzzle in this most puzzling of election seasons is why so many white evangelicals are flocking to Donald Trump, shouting Hosannas as he flies overhead in his private jet. On a Super Tuesday thick with primaries in the Bible Belt, Trump won seven states. He carried the born-again vote in Massachusetts, Vermont, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Virginia, careening yet again down a white evangelical “lane” that was supposed to be owned by Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. In Mississippi, where evangelicals turned out in record numbers—and white evangelicals accounted for a whopping 75 percent of Republican voters—Trump won by double digits.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Donald Trump curses like a bond trader. He mocks the disabled. He expresses no need for God’s forgiveness. He seems about as familiar with the Bible (“Two Corinthians”) as ordinary Americans are with the loopholes of the IRS tax code that Trump delights in threading. “The Art of the Deal,” his campaign biography by default, is a human billboard for pride and lust. “I’m a greedy person,” he told an Iowa audience, “I’ve always been greedy.” He’s wrong for evangelicals on the issues, on theology, on piety, and most of all on “values,” the buzzword of the culture wars over the past half-century.
Trump’s opponents, meanwhile, have devoted their careers to tailoring their resumes for values voters. Cruz is the pious son of a traveling evangelist; Rubio, a staunch Catholic who won’t cotton to abortion even in cases of rape and incest; and Kasich, a member of an ultra-conservative Anglican denomination that went its own way after the Episcopal Church consecrated a gay bishop.
Trump? He seems like he’d be more comfortable on Tinder than in a church pew. …
_____________________________________
We may soon be faced with a choice: Trump or Clinton. One option is to abstain from voting (or vote for a 3rd party option which in my view is tantamount to abstaining).
I’ve always understood the reality of voting for the “lesser of two evils” — as all men (and women) are “evil,” all are fallen, none is righteous. So barring writing Jesus’ name in, we’re always faced with that choice, to one degree or another. One choice is less evil than the other.
Beyond that, we will all have convictions of conscience about where the line is in casting that kind of vote.
Just thinking out loud as I still don’t know what my own choice would be.
We went to see The Good, the Bad and the Ugly this afternoon as part of a Classic Cinema Series. Eastwood was about as likeable as Cruz as The Good and Lee Van Cleef was even badder than Hillary. However, like Trump in the remake, Eli Wallach completely stole the show as The Ugly.
Forgive me if someone has already posted this, but I want to put it up as a tribute to Russell Moore. I don’t always agree with him, but he has been both extremely courageous and brilliant when speaking about Trump and “evangelical” leaders who have endorsed Trump. There will be a need for more courage and brilliance over the next few months.
Obama is expected to announce a (Supreme Court) nominee as early as this week. Many believe that the choice will be one of three federal appeals court judges: Sri Srinivasan, Merrick Garland or Paul Watford.
Wandering Views 
Some humor amid all our despair:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432708/donald-trumps-media-supporters-principles-dont-matter-them
___________________________________
… At times, I sometimes think I’m living in a weird remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. If you’ve seen any of the umpteen versions, you know the pattern. Someone you know or love goes to sleep one night and appears the next day to be the exact same person you always knew.
Except.
Except they’re different, somehow. They talk funny. They don’t care about the same things they used to. It’s almost like they became Canadian overnight — seemingly normal, but off in some way. Even once-friendly dogs start barking at them. …
I live in constant fear that I will run into Kevin Williamson, Charlie Cooke, or Rich Lowry and they will start telling me that Donald Trump is a serious person because he’s tapping into this or he’s willing to say that. I imagine my dog suddenly barking at them uncontrollably. … I’ll say, “I’m sorry Rich, I don’t know what got into her.”
And I can just hear the Lowry-doppelganger replying, “When Mr. Trump is president, dogs will behave or they will pay a price. Just like Paul Ryan and Michelle Fields.” “Lowry you bastard! You went to sleep! Why!? You went to sleep and now you’re gone!” …
_________________________________
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yesterday was an important day in the election campaign and not because of anything said by the gullible old Mr. Carson.
The riot started by the terrorist Bill Ayers and Black Lives Mater criminals at the Chicago Trump rally will function as this year’s Reichstag Fire. Support for Herr Trump will increase sharply as Republicans on the fence break in favor of the charismatic buffoon. They hate Ayers and the rioters and Ayers and the rioters hate Trump.
Meanwhile Hillary has shockingly committed the unpardonable sin. Trying to be gracious for the first time in her life, she recounted that Nancy Reagan had been sympathetic to the old homosexuals who in the 80s were giving each other AIDS as often as sorority sisters give each other wedding gifts. This of course was the worst heresy to the modern perverts, and it is not clear what Hillary can do to redeem herself.
Trump has already made major inroads into the “idiot vote” which has long been a Democrat staple. Now he has an opening to pick up a share of the pervert vote.
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Yesterday was a full, fun day. I got admonished by Cheryl and I got to tease Roscuro. The golf course is flooded, so I am just going to take a walk.
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Classic — watching interviews with last night’s Trump protesters: “free speech is protected, hate speech isn’t!”
Who is teaching these people?
LikeLiked by 2 people
On yesterday’s politics thread, Donna said we got out of the sixties unscathed.
We didn’t.
The sixties made a permanent change in our culture. I just watched it as much as I could.
I wasn’t part of it because we were in survival mode at the time.
But during the sixties is when church membership started dropping, movies became raunchy, (thought I took Elvera to the first movies we attended together, when we went to see “Sound of Music” and “My Fair Lady”.)
Men stopped being gentlemen and women stopped being ladies.
Sunday became a big shopping day. And they advertised “I’m shopping at K-Mart this Thanksgiving.”
Racial unrest became violent. The corrections needed to be made because there was lots of unjust laws and customs, but it became a business for some who make a living by stirring up trouble.
The ultimate outcome? Rush put it succinctly when said, “The problem is that our children are being taught by kids who threw rocks at the police in the sixties.”
LikeLiked by 4 people
john Adams had a lot of germane remarks to make about politics and people. Here’s one:
Human passions unbridled by morality and religion…would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
– John Adams
Here’s where you can find a whole bunch:
http://www.john-adams-heritage.com/quotes/
LikeLiked by 1 person
We were just discussing that last night. The eighteen year old in rebellion has come up with quite the potty mouth and does not hesitate to watch where she uses it. Several older people have told me they called her on it. Anyway, her seventeen year old brother said, “I admit I have used some of the words at times, but she is way beyond me.” We talked about how it used to be that boys would use language like that and some men but not around women, children, or polite men. Now the boys are still careful but the girls and women can be extremely foul mouthed. They have been set free from the restrictiveness of being ladies and get to be…..something else.
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What does that even mean? She does not hesitate to use it. She does not watch who she is with before blurting it out.
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Mumsee, I know you know this, but you need to get across to her the opinion boys have of girls who talk like that.
They assume, without question that the woman who says it does it. With the same care she uses it.
Then women complain if they are assaulted.
The guys assume they are asking for it.
LikeLike
We have tried. Her brother has tried. Their other brother, the one we tried to adopt but he left at fourteen and then got seriously into drugs and spent a lot of time in jail and juvie, says he believes she is the most likely of the three here, to follow him and their oldest brother into drugs. He has also tried to get her back on track. She will make her own decisions.
But the point is, since the sixties, that has been thrown to the winds as the women and girls are free to do what they want, not realizing they are actually putting themselves in prison.
LikeLike
“unscathed” was not a good term to use. I meant the internal violence stopped after what had been several years of fierce demonstrations and assassinations. The political order, such as it was, did seem to return to some kind of order and normalcy.
But, of course, the culture was going through a great upheaval that has had lasting effects. That’s why I also mentioned in that same comment that when historians look back many years from now, the political violence & tension in the ’60s will very possibly be seen as connected to what our political system is experiencing now.
And as has been noted by many, politics follows culture — so our culture has given rise to what we see now in our political leadership. Grump.
I knew an anthropology professor who said many of these things really got their start in the 1950s, not the ’60s. They bloomed in the 1960s though as those radical ideas of the so-called “beat” generation of that era began to go more mainstream. The youth of the ’60s took it from there, and on and on. And here we are.
LikeLike
And the youth generation of the ’60s also was very large, which gave it even more impact.
We see a similarly large “millennial” generation today, of course, so we can expect changes going on now on college campuses (especially the anti-free speech movement) to have a greater impact as it makes its way into the mainstream (“political correctness”).
LikeLike
Great end to George Will’s most recent column:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/are-we-reaching-peak-trump/2016/03/11/a1519492-e6fe-11e5-bc08-3e03a5b41910_story.html
___________________________
Sanders does not even understand his white whale, the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. It ended prohibitions against independent (not coordinated with candidates) political advocacy by corporations and unions. It had nothing to do with what Bloomberg could have done, spend his own money on himself.
Politicians have been doing this since at least 1757, when George Washington supplied voters with 144 gallons of whiskey and other drink, enough to amply lubricate each of the 307 voters he persuaded in winning a seat in Virginia’s House of Delegates. This year, campaign spending on whiskey for voters would be welcomed by them as an anesthetic.
____________________________
LikeLiked by 2 people
Looking ahead to Super Tuesday & how those results could foretell the convention ahead:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/republican-contention-chaos-213725
______________________________________
The March 15 winner-take-all primaries in Florida and Ohio have been billed as make-or-break for the Republican candidates still holding out hope that they can topple Donald Trump. But those contests are also make-or-break for Trump, and for the Republican Party: They will determine whether there’s chaos or a coronation at the Cleveland convention.
If Trump can win both states, he’s on a glide path to earning a majority of delegates ahead of the July 18 convention. The only way to dethrone him at that point would be for the GOP to throw out its existing convention rules. A move that dramatic won’t happen. It would divide and destroy a party that has always prided itself on adhering to rules.
But if Trump doesn’t win both states, the GOP is likely to find itself in Cleveland with no candidate above the 1,237-delegate majority needed to claim the nomination. If that happens, the Republican Party’s own rules lock in a quagmire in Cleveland—and likely a multi-ballot, no-holds-barred convention.
The craziness will unfold in stages, with more delegates increasingly freeing up to vote for whomever they like as the process advances. All that puts a huge premium on an obscure and intricate competition happening right now in each state—the selection of the actual delegates. Any campaign not waging a major, if under-the-national-radar, effort to get its supporters elected as delegates will come up short in Cleveland. …
____________________________________
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On Ben Carson’s endorsement
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/ben-carson-supporters-shock-anger-donald-trump-endorsement
___________________________________
Ben Carson’s decision to endorse GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump divided his supporters, with many expressing shock and anger over the move on social media.
“Can’t believe you chose to support the one candidate who mocks God and is definitely not a Christian. Very disappointed in you and have lost much respect,” one supporter wrote on Carson’s Facebook page on Friday. …
Carson has been a star in conservative circles since his 2013 speech at the National Prayer Breakfast criticizing President Obama.
Many supporters, even those who expressed initial shock at the endorsement, though, voiced their continued support for the soft-spoken retired neurosurgeon who ended his White House bid last week.
Carson sought to explain his endorsement of Trump in a note posted to his Facebook account where he argued that the businessman represented a deviation from the nation’s current direction of “uncertainty” and “ruination.”
The post received a mixed response, with more than 60,000 Facebook likes. Another 7,000 were angered by the post, 5,000 loved it and 2,700 were saddened, according to Facebook’s new reactions. …
______________________________________
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http://thecommonroomblog.com/2016/03/reactions-to-carsons-endorsement-of-trump.html#respond
“I don’t understand being ‘disappointed’ in Carson as opposed to two other reactions I think more logical, but see less often:
1. Consider that maybe, just maybe, Carson knows what he’s doing (after all he knows Trump, and we only know of him via a media which hates him)- and maybe, since your guy likes Trump, consider you might have been wrong about Trump…”
Reminds me of Mumsee’s wise comment yesterday, especially the part in bold (emphasis mine): “I have been a Carson supporter and admirer from the start. I believe he is a man of integrity. He knows Trump a lot better than I do and if he sees hope there, I will start looking for it. Perhaps Trump has had his eyes opened, we shall see. I am not a Trump supporter but am a Carson supporter.”
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Sorry, Mumsee I never thought Carson had any credibility and his Trump endorsement confirms it.
Clinton tried to burnish her leftist credentials versus Sanders and failed miserably. After claiming she had no clue where Sanders was when she was advocating universal health care in 92 and 93, the Sanders campaign released a picture of Sanders standing behind her in 1992 and a copy of a letter Hilary sent to Sanders thanking him for his support.
The NYT has an article on the geography of Trump support. The top indicators of Trump support 1. white with no high school diploma 2. report “American” as ancestry on US Census 3. live in a mobile home. 4. blue collar old economy job 5. From an area/family which supported George Wallace in 1968.
I never understood why someone would protest and interrupt an opponent’s rally. Protest outside but inside, its counter-productive.
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The comment by Anonymous shows why Carson’s endorsement of Trump is so harmful just as the endorsements of Trump by Falwell, Jr. and Pastor Jeffress were also harmful.
Personally, if Cruz pulled out and endorsed Sanders or if Reagan rose from the dead and endorsed Trump, I would not give any credence to their endorsements. Instead I would be extremely disappointed that a man (or a corpse) whom I respected had made such a foolish endorsement.
However, some people are not confident in their own judgment or knowledge, and thus value (and may follow) the endorsement of someone they really respect. Ben Carson: Fine man, good hand eye coordination, bad judgment.
LikeLiked by 1 person
HRW, Your old Bolshevik is hanging in there.
Here is why people interrupt someone else’s rally:
1. The someone else may (as Sanders did to the Black Lives Mater women in Seattle) just hand you his microphone, let you pontificate, and then just “walk away” as the Humongous told the people to do in Road Warrior; or
2. The someone else may (like Trump) cancel his own rally and make you a liberal hero.
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For some good news on the endorsement front, this bad-haired guy throws papers AND is a Christian singer AND has endorsed Cruz:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/02/05/as-an-african-american-i-support-him-100-percent-newsboys-lead-singer-michael-tait-endorses-ted-cruz/
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I don’t like Trump — and worry (a lot) about his authoritarian/demogogue-style remarks — but I’m a little wary of the all-out Hitler comparisons.
Liberals have definitely latched on to this and are acting and reacting accordingly. And that can be dangerous in its own rite. As in no-holds-barred to stop him?
And as for the demonstrations and whose “fault” it is:
It’s so much more nuanced .than has been portrayed by the politicians … Granted, Trump’s rhetoric has been over the top. He needs to tone it down. Seriously. But blaming the violence caused by demonstrators solely (or even mostly) on him absolves future protestors who try to shut down rallies. It kind of says, “well, they were provoked, so what do you expect?”
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Similarities and differences between Hitler and Trump:
Similarities:
1. Both were effective demagogues.
2. Both were most popular among the lower-middle class.
3. Both used unpopular groups as scapegoats for their nation’s problems.
4. Both promised to restore their nation’s greatness by aggressively dealing with other countries.
5. Neither was an orthodox Christian or an active churchgoer though both had some Christian supporters.
6. Both were amoral in their personal sexual behavior.
7. Both arose at a time when some of their opponents were socialists and/or communists.
8. The supporters of both engaged in violent confrontations with violent opponents.
9. Their language sometimes encouraged violence by supporters.
10. Each arose when perversion was rampant and orthodox Christianity was in decline.
11. Each showed clear signs of megalomania.
12. Each sensed weakness in an opponent and ruthlessly exploited
that weakness. (Think Bush as Chamberlain.)
Differences.
1. Hitler started as a soldier; then became a politician. Trump started as a rich heir; then became a businessman/con man and an entertainer.
2. Trump’s speeches were full of vulgarities and profanity.
3. Hitler took over a tiny political party and built it in his image. Trump is hijacking a large existing party.
I don’t really think Trump will start a World War or murder millions, but most Germans in 1933 didn’t think Hitler would do those things.
I really see Trump as a combination of Hitler and Bozo the Clown.
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Another analysis piece on Trump’s appeal among (self-defined) “evangelicals”:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/the-huge-cultural-shift-thats-helping-trump-win-evangelicals-213729
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The big puzzle in this most puzzling of election seasons is why so many white evangelicals are flocking to Donald Trump, shouting Hosannas as he flies overhead in his private jet. On a Super Tuesday thick with primaries in the Bible Belt, Trump won seven states. He carried the born-again vote in Massachusetts, Vermont, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Virginia, careening yet again down a white evangelical “lane” that was supposed to be owned by Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. In Mississippi, where evangelicals turned out in record numbers—and white evangelicals accounted for a whopping 75 percent of Republican voters—Trump won by double digits.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Donald Trump curses like a bond trader. He mocks the disabled. He expresses no need for God’s forgiveness. He seems about as familiar with the Bible (“Two Corinthians”) as ordinary Americans are with the loopholes of the IRS tax code that Trump delights in threading. “The Art of the Deal,” his campaign biography by default, is a human billboard for pride and lust. “I’m a greedy person,” he told an Iowa audience, “I’ve always been greedy.” He’s wrong for evangelicals on the issues, on theology, on piety, and most of all on “values,” the buzzword of the culture wars over the past half-century.
Trump’s opponents, meanwhile, have devoted their careers to tailoring their resumes for values voters. Cruz is the pious son of a traveling evangelist; Rubio, a staunch Catholic who won’t cotton to abortion even in cases of rape and incest; and Kasich, a member of an ultra-conservative Anglican denomination that went its own way after the Episcopal Church consecrated a gay bishop.
Trump? He seems like he’d be more comfortable on Tinder than in a church pew. …
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When I got home, I had a msg on my answering machine.
It was Jerry Falwell, wanting me to vote for Trump.
He didn’t convince me.
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Stay strong, Chas! You and North Carolina are the last hope to redeem the honor of Dixie.
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We may soon be faced with a choice: Trump or Clinton. One option is to abstain from voting (or vote for a 3rd party option which in my view is tantamount to abstaining).
I’ve always understood the reality of voting for the “lesser of two evils” — as all men (and women) are “evil,” all are fallen, none is righteous. So barring writing Jesus’ name in, we’re always faced with that choice, to one degree or another. One choice is less evil than the other.
Beyond that, we will all have convictions of conscience about where the line is in casting that kind of vote.
Just thinking out loud as I still don’t know what my own choice would be.
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We went to see The Good, the Bad and the Ugly this afternoon as part of a Classic Cinema Series. Eastwood was about as likeable as Cruz as The Good and Lee Van Cleef was even badder than Hillary. However, like Trump in the remake, Eli Wallach completely stole the show as The Ugly.
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Forgive me if someone has already posted this, but I want to put it up as a tribute to Russell Moore. I don’t always agree with him, but he has been both extremely courageous and brilliant when speaking about Trump and “evangelical” leaders who have endorsed Trump. There will be a need for more courage and brilliance over the next few months.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/02/29/russell-moore-why-this-election-makes-me-hate-the-word-evangelical/
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Bernie just said he does not “believe in” private charter schools.
Wow.
I’ve said this before, but he really IS a socialist.
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And meanwhile (from Politico):
Obama is expected to announce a (Supreme Court) nominee as early as this week. Many believe that the choice will be one of three federal appeals court judges: Sri Srinivasan, Merrick Garland or Paul Watford.
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