I'm not making up that headline, folks. This is the creepy, unAmerican personality cult that is metastasizing within the Republican Party like the most lethal, rapid form of stage-4 cancer.
Fortunately, this is one crank fanboy on his private property - for now. If Trump realizes all his ambitions, we can count on such idolatrous displays defacing every public building across the country by Executive decree like his name feces are scrawled across every last one of his misbegotten properties - probably accompanied by some form of official hand gesture, to boot:
[Delusions] of grandeur appear to have passed from Donald Trump to his supporters.
A man has erected a large poster of the Republican candidate alongside a major thoroughfare in Iowa, making it a pilgrimage site for those who marvel at Trump's nonsens[ical] presidential run for the White House.
The four foot by eight foot (1.2 x 2.4 meter) photograph has become a landmark of sorts in a residential suburb of Iowa's capital Des Moines.
It shows Trump with his mouth open in a rictus and his eyes hard and focused, as if he might be unleashing one of his (many) tirades, or delivering a takedown of a rival.
"I've always been a little bit of a Trump fan," said George Davey, good-natured computer engineer by day and inventor by night, as AFP knocked on his door.
Trump supporters - and U.S. media - have flocked to Davey's poster since November. [emphases added]
It's chilling, isn't it? And I'm not talking about rapturous awe, either, Does nobody but I see how fascist-grand-spectacle-esque this is? Complete with quasi-religious terminology and imagery?
Here's a historical reminder....
Sic semper fortes.
This isn't who we, as Americans, are - or were before 2008, at least. It's definitely not who conservative Republicans have been pre-Trumpmania, and are supposed to still be. Have so many on the Right really fallen this far, this fast, so mentally addled by irrational, corrosive, raging anger at the GOP "establishment" (a term that has been completely drained of any lingering practical meaning and is now just a sneering epithet, the rhetorical equivalent of an extended middle finger), so self-deluded by the notion that all that's needed to take everything we want is to elect somebody who will "FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!" hard enough regardless of the built-in obstacles to such destabilizing change the Founders wrote into the Constitution, that the first demagogue that comes along and tells them what they want to hear, despite having nothing in his background to suggest that he believes a word he's saying or deliver on a single one of his promises (which flip and flop back and forth from week to week and even day to day), can get them to blow their heretofore zealously cherished conservative principles out the nearest airlock without a second thought, vetting-free?
Yes! They! Have! Just look at that downpayment above on the wannabe American il duce....
I've got a few hand gesture suggestions for Presidente di classe, but they're probably not very likely to become "official".
UPDATE: Latest Trump betrayal that should destroy his candidacy but will only make his mesmerized base embrace him all the more passionately:
Money line: “I always had a great relationship with Harry Reid. And frankly, if I weren’t running for office I’d be able to deal with her [Pelosi], I’d be able to deal with Reid, I’d be able to deal with anybody.” This point has been made often, most recently by Andy McCarthy, but it can’t be repeated enough: This guy is on the verge of beating Ted Cruz as an “outsider” by touting his record of cronyism. How can you be anti-establishment, wonders McCarthy, when you’re crowing about your history of essentially bribing politicians, including politicians from the other party? It’s a perfect complement to Trump, the least socially conservative candidate in the Republican field, landing the endorsement of the son of the man who founded the Moral Majority. Trump’s success is like a flashing road sign, “Republicans don’t actually care about most of the things they claim to care about.” [emphases added]
Let me address that by answering the subsequent Allahpundit question:
I don’t understand how Trump fans reconcile the fact that this guy spent six months running as a strong man, who’d impose his will on Washington through a combination of charisma, an electoral mandate, and raw executive power, but has spent most of the last month touting his willingness and ability to make deals with every Democrat in Washington, as if Pelosi and Schumer will accede to his demands out of sheer admiration for his testicular fortitude.
Simple: Trump was lying about being a conservative and a Republican and a "populist" for six months to completely program his supporters to the point where they really wouldn't leave him even if he actually did shoot somebody, and now he feels sufficiently confident to "come out of the closet" as the corrupt, cronyist New York liberal "deal-maker" he's always been, even to the point of openly telegraphing that it will be Schumer and Pelosi with whom he'll be making deals, not Ryan and McConnell, who will, along with their majorities, be totally shut out of the lawmaking process.
Oh, and one more thing for y'all to consider: One of the things that most incensed Tea Partiers about the most recent omnibus continuing resolution for FY 2016 was all the earmarks that flowed so freely as part of the "deal-making" process. Does anybody believe that with Donald Trump in the White House, earmarks are going to go away?
Charles Repine
Old and busted: BUT HE FIGHTS. New Hotness: BUT HE REACHES ACROSS THE AISLE. @allahpundit
No comments:
Post a Comment