This isn’t going to work, is it?
I’m watching Old Orange, aka 45, as we’re all in this train plunging off this cliff together, and occupying myself by wondering, in a detached sort of way, how he’s going to handle this.
Not the crashing train of state, of course. It’s obvious what he’s doing about that. Nothing. Except for any grifting he and his Trumpists can accomplish before we find out where the bottom is.
I mean, how is he going to handle the fact that for apparently the very first time in his life he has to have evidence for what he says. And for the very first time, apparently, people think he shouldn’t be promising things unless he’s going to do them.
He’s spent his life throwing bizarre insults in order to play to his audience. He’s a Chatbot. What else would you expect? But suddenly when he says something idiotic for his base, such as that awful Obama wiretapping him, people start demanding evidence. What’s next? At this rate, they’ll soon be insisting on subject-verb agreement.
Then there’s the other big flap: the health care plan. It’s all the polar opposite of what he “promised.”
That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the man. He’s never promised anything in his life, not in the usual meaning of the word. He says whatever he thinks might get you to sign on the dotted line, what he calls “The Deal,” and then after that he gets to do what he wants. “Come up and sue me some time” is his general idea.
And now, suddenly, the meddlesome proles are acting like he’s under some sort of obligation? To them? For having said something to get their votes? Crazy. He got their votes. They’re irrelevant now. You’d think that would be obvious even to proles.
So what’s he going to do when he has to answer for his words for the first time in his life?
I see you have a newer post up but I’d been meaning for some time to say about this one, that I *loved* this line:
“Come up and sue me some time” is his general idea.”
Whole post is informative and on target as usual, of course, but to keep posting stating just that would sound just a little tRumpian toadyesque.
earlynerd on March 30th, 2017 at 18:32
I wish I DID have the money to sue the son of a pimp. Can you imagine being a billionaire and being able to throw a new lawsuit at that miserable excuse for a mess every few hours?
Oh well. Can’t have everything.
Meanwhile, did you see the recent and lucid article at TPM?
The Dump may have more than mere civil lawsuits to worry about.
quixote on March 31st, 2017 at 18:48
Would that a more moral Peter Thiel type would step in just that Robin Hood role.
Off to read the TPM article now. One thing that’s really rotting my socks right now is that in all of this, the media is trying to forget Hillary Clinton ever existed.
It takes some effort to remember/realize that she is the chief victim in all of this – to have worked so hard, to have run such a good campaign, to be so very suited to the job of President, and then to be robbed of what she’d earned by what the media is now treating as a breathless soap opera or spy thriller.
Earlynerd on March 31st, 2017 at 22:35
One other note. I noticed you’d avoided the everyday sexism of S.O.B. (what did some guy’s mom ever do to ya?)
One of my favorites along those lines was a P.G. Wodehouse character calling someone a “son of a bachelor”. Put the onus right where it belonged, and in the 1930’s, no less.
Earlynerd on March 31st, 2017 at 22:43
(It’s probably too late for you to see this, but, anyway….)
Yeah, the language issues are one of my pet peeves. The sexist ones, but also other usages that don’t pay attention to what words mean. (“Based off of” ?? Based on, dammit!) Or the way people throw “fuck” around like birdseed. It doesn’t mean “go get laid.” The way it’s used, it means “get raped” and it’s 100% misogynist. But nobody wants to even hear it because all the other swears sound prim by now and it’s essential to prove how very too-cool-for-school we all are.
And when it comes to meaning, Agent Orange is the son of a pimp. The family fortune started with running brothels.
quixote on April 5th, 2017 at 21:01
Irregardless 🙂
You may or may not have caught a whiff of me taking a stand against sexist language on another “feminist” blog. It ended as it usually has throughout my adult life, with women piling on once I had, like one of my brothers said, become the nail that sticks up and gets hammered down.
You’re right, of course, but you did take out my one and only cuss word that I used freely on construction and other extremely sexist sites, like IT in Alaska, to make the boys blush (it does, it really really does when a woman uses it without apology). Unlike biological slurs, unlike religious slurs, which until this last last national selection, I had avoided, “fuck” insults the vast majority of human beings. Every one is capable of the act and most people are guilty of it, so great slur material.
Only, you are right. Like “sucks”* and “lame”, there are humans at the other end of the insult. “Fuck” is very much male subject to female object – even the famous bird is a hieroglyphic for balls and penis. There goes most my language in intense traffic.
*I’d asked one young male who used “sucks” as an insult “Is that what you say to your girlfriend when you’re begging her with tears in your eyes?” And of course, besides being what women do for men in icky women’s sex, it’s what gay men do for other men when abdicating their precious sovereign manhood and choosing to be objects, so twice the insult voltage.
Earlynerd on April 20th, 2017 at 23:33
Yes. Overuse has ended in the uselessness of swear words. I think “fuck” is on the cusp of that, too, completely aside from anybody being struck with what they’re actually saying.
I was arguing about the use of “fuck” on another blog, years ago. The generally very perceptive and feminist woman who ran it insisted it wasn’t an issue because, hey, it just means sex.
Oh yes? Then what are you telling yourself a hundred times a day when sex equals the nastiest thing you can think of to wish on somebody?
Her: blank stare. Me: getting nowhere as usual.
If you’ve dealt with the crap on construction and IT sites … wow.
quixote on April 21st, 2017 at 10:20