That’s actually a plus in my book. Like I care if some Prussian noble had a little extra trouble mustering an army.
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Prussia? Bavaria’s arch enemy? What do the Prussians have to do with this?
And that isn’t the point.
You aren’t going to vote for that assclown anyhow.
I wish some of my ancestral family had avoided serving their country in the thirties and forties by any means.
I’ll just enjoy the hell out of ultra-wingers voting for a draft dodger from a draft dodging refugee family.
It’s the hypocrisy I’m pointing at.
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I’m sure they were up to something. Everyone knows you can’t trust the Prussians.
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I feel like in some episodes, particularly in the first season, he actually rushed through the jokes to get back to the point. I think he might be more interested in covering important news than he is in being funny.
I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project
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Seems quite possible. I do sense a more committed activist drive in him than I did in Stewart.
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So the piece was amazing and “Make Donald Drumpf Again” is hilarious. It was a stellar take down of all of the stated reasons for voting for Trump.
I’m sure most of us know, though, that no one who was going to vote for Trump watching John Oliver, and more to the point, stated reasons aren’t reasons. When you point a camera at someone and say, “Why do you…?” they aren’t going to tell you why they do that thing, they are going to tell you the most intelligent reason they can think of to do that thing, a reason they think you will find convincing or approve of.
Even if they were watching John Oliver I don’t know they find his takedown of “Tells it like it is” convincing. Telling it like it is isn’t the same thing as telling the truth.
In that Matt Taibbi piece on Trump in Rolling Stone he talked about a rally where Trump was discussing how America doesn’t do bulk drug negotiations for Medicare. Trump said it costs America $300B a year, when really it’s probably more like $16B a year. Politifact will report that as a shade of untrue, but to the people listening to Trump, it’s far more true than false. And pointing out that the number is wrong is more false than true, because it gets the fact right while deceiving about the larger point by deflecting attention from the important fact of getting screwed to the much less important fact of how whopping the dollar figure is.
Another thing that’s true is that the media are largely corrupted by money. They serve monied interests. If you don’t know how to evaluate candidates and don’t trust the sources of information you have no them, the heuristic of “I’ll just vote for whoever the media seems to not want me to vote for,” is not all that irrational.
There are lots of true things. One thing that is definitely true is that Americans are getting completely screwed by people with a lot of money. Trump doesn’t say a lot of true things, but he says things that support that larger (and emotionally relevant) truth that none of the other Republican candidates want to acknowledge. I’m increasingly sympathetic towards Trump supporters (not Trump). Oliver did a great job on Trump, but I don’t think he said anything that would reach any of them (as noted above, none of them are watching him, so that’s probably fine).
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I don’t think anyone other than Trump is saying anything that will reach them.
If we are indeed seeing the end of the Southern-Strategy GOP coalition, what’s going to happen to all those voters?
Even if Trump somehow loses the Primary or General, his core vote isn’t going to disappear. Somebody is going to go after their vote next time. Possibly someone even worse.
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He “broke the spell” by pairing the Trump brand with funny instead of scary.
As with O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Beck, Tucker Carlson, funny is their Kryptonite. If they can’t shock by “telling it like it is” then they can’t do anything.
Trump supporters may not like the jokes or feel persuaded by the reasons …
They do understand that people are laughing at him though.
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Yeah, I know. I likened it to an earthquake, we know one is coming, and the longer it takes the larger it is going to be. Given that Trump is already explosive enough to rip the Republican party (and maybe America if he wins) in half, just how bad will the next candidate be if the pressure isn’t released (and if America continues on the plutocracy path)?
This is a very fair point, and Trump has repeatedly shown he cannot take a joke.
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The ‘tiny fingers’ part is the most effective dig, if you ask me. I hate the seventies band Journey, and the robotics kids I mentor know that, so they go far out of their way to force me to listen to more Journey. Same thing. Hit him where he feels it.
Are Trump supporters aware that he has tiny fingers? They will be in the coming months, as the cartoonists of the world seize on that feature.
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More effective than publicly tying the “Trump” name to a string of failed steak, vodka and mortgage ventures, settled lawsuits, bankruptcies and fraudulent claims?
He’ll feel it when it costs him money.
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Right? I don’t get why people would suddenly stop supporting him because people are joking about his fingers. Maybe that would happen for some if they could also see how obsessively sensitive he is about the joke, and then what that sensitivity says about him, but then, his supporters just aren’t the the sort of people who can see further than a single layer of meaning.
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Exactly — I think the “spell” of a brand is that it has come to signify some meaning directly rather than fitting somewhere into a rational argument.
So Drumpf supporters will tune into whether scary-tell-it-like-it-is-truthy-guy is instead a punchline for jokes. And if the jokes are about how his name (or short fingers) signify for fraud and business failure (i.e. a shitty lifestyle brand), then Drumpf will notice too.
And sooner is better. He might even pull out of the race if our comediatariat can manage some sustained TDS style comedy-reporting for the next few weeks.
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First of all, I don’t really disagree with you about jokes. I think if Clinton stays positive and people who don’t like Trump treat him like a clown rather than a threat then she should win.
But if we could control how half the population was going to behave we wouldn’t be in this situation. I don’t think going after him for his failures scans. The people who support him are mostly “proof in the pudding” people who will take any argument about his failure and think, “But he’s right, he’s not a failure.” I also don’t think being calling him a racist, a xenophobe or anything else will work because the people who support him will take it as a personal attack against themselves.
I think there is a strategy to reach Trump supporters, but it would require a lot of effort. That is, an individually centered movement to validate Trump supporters’ feelings, respect them as voters who get their say in democracy, and provide emotional reasons why Trump is a bad choice. People can be reached by saying “Wow, I can see why you’d think of voting for Trump, you are pretty angry about the state of things in America. When I think of Trump being president it upsets me because…”
But behind that I think there has to be some answer to “Well, what are we going to do?” Because that anger isn’t going away. Maybe Clinton beats Sanders and thinks, “I guess we’d better do something about the disappointment democrats feel in their party because it’s clearly pretty strong.” Maybe she beats Trump and says, “I guess we better do something about the anger Americans feel at their country because it’s clearly pretty strong.” My money is on her thinking something more like, “We won, so obviously all that silly stuff about how we need change was just silly.”
This is why I think Sanders is by far the best chance against Trump. He listens to people. He provides a clear alternative to that status quo.
“Vote Clinton! Continue America’s Decline into a Plutocratic Police State!” is not exactly the best slogan, so in the now seemingly very probable event of Clinton vs. Trump, it sounds like half of America will be fighting amongst itself about whether to use vicious attacks or strong arguments or jokes to try to fool angry people into not voting for Trump while the other half of America gets angrier and angrier.
I am already mentally figuring out where to put everyone if I need to cram a few Muslim American refugees into my condo.
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And on that day, Satan will be skating to work.
There is nothing that Clinton could do that would mollify anti-establishment democrat voters. She’s the absolute embodiment of what they’re voting against.
Leftists are expected to suck it up and vote for the centrist after their plucky little candidate loses. When (vanishingly rarely) the boot’s on the other foot and the leftists win (like McGovern), the centrist Dems turn around and vote for the Republican.
I guess I can look at jobs back in Europe. Except the British will probably vote to leave the EU and sabotage that plan.
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How easy is it for you to get residency in Canada? As it is a commonwealth nation.
Thanks! The clip suggested one I’d never seen before following the one you posted:
Best part is Mendoza’s latest evil plot, a new drug, Swank…TEN TIMES AS ADDICTIVE AS MARIJUANA
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My most likely destination given what I do would be Montreal, and that’s a PITA visa-wise, I think. Might as well try to move to France or Germany in that case.
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Your message is received load and clear. Beginning petition to PM Trudeau to begin border wall.
I got out early, the rest of you must make your bed, sleep in it or lie there while it burns
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