Thursday, October 6, 2016

A Nation of Chumps or Nihilists?


The first part of Tom Engelhardt’s recent posting, This is not about Donald Trump. And I mean it (1. and see text below) made me ponder what a nation of chumps (2.) we all have become. We seem to have gone to sleep after WWII and finally opened our eyes 64 years later living in an old Laurel and Hardy movie (3.). Except, instead of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy playing the chumps, we are the chumps.

But the ending of Engelhardt’s article had me waking in a living, terrible nightmare, summed up with his ending quote:

"The Donald represents, as a friend of mine likes to say, the suicide bomber in us all. And voting for him, among other things, will be an act of nihilism, (4.) a mood that fits well with imperial decline."

So, which are we? Chumps or Nihilists?



1. This Is Not About Donald Trump, Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram, 6 Oct 2016
2. Chump - A gullible person; a sucker; a loser; someone easily taken advantage of; someone lacking common sense. “It shouldn't be hard to put one over on that chump.”
3. A review - Celebrating A Chump at Oxford at 75, Carrie-Anne Brownian, Magick Theatre, 18 Sept 2015.
4. Nihilism - The belief that traditional morals, ideas, beliefs, etc., have no worth or value.
The belief that a society's political and social institutions are so bad that they should be destroyed.

Tom Engelhardt’s recent posting:
This is not about Donald Trump. And I mean it.

From the moment the first scribe etched a paean of praise to Nebuchadnezzar into a stone tablet, it’s reasonable to conclude that never in history has the media covered a single human being as it has Donald Trump. For more than a year now, unless a terror attack roiled American life, he’s been the news cycle, essentially the only one, morning, noon, and night, day after day, week after week, month after month. His every word, phrase, move, insult, passing comment, off-the-cuff remark, claim, boast, brazen lie, shout, or shout-out has been ours as well.  In this period, he’s praised his secret plan to destroy ISIS and take Iraqi oil. He’s thumped that “big, fat, beautiful wall” again and again. He’s birthered a campaign that could indeed transport him, improbably enough, into the Oval Office.  He’s fought it out with 17 political rivals, among others, including “lyin’ Ted,” “low-energy Jeb,” Carly (“Look at that face!  Would anyone vote for that?”) Fiorini, “crooked Hillary,” a Miss Universe (“Miss Piggy”), the “highly overrated” Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle ("You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever"), always Rosie O’Donnell (“a slob [with] a fat, ugly face”), and so many others.  He’s made veiled assassination threats; lauded the desire to punch someone in the face; talked about shooting “somebody” in “the middle of Fifth Avenue”; defended the size of his hands and his you-know-what; retweeted neo-Nazis and a quote from Mussolini; denounced the outsourcing of American manufacturing jobs and products while outsourcing his own jobs and products; excoriated immigrants and foreign labor while hiring the same; advertised the Trump brand in every way imaginable; had a bromance with Vladimir Putin; threatened to let nuclear weapons proliferate; complained bitterly about a rigged election, rigged debates, a rigged moderator, and a rigged microphone; swore that he and he alone was capable of again making America, and so the world, a place of the sort of greatness only he himself could match, and that’s just to begin a list on the subject of The Donald.

In other words, thanks to the media attention he garners incessantly, he is the living embodiment of our American moment. No matter what you think of him, his has been a journey of a sort we’ve never seen before, a triumph of the first order, whatever happens on November 8th. He’s burnished his own brand; opened a new hotel on -- yes -- Pennsylvania Avenue (which he’s used his election run to promote and publicize); sold his products mercilessly; promoted his children; funneled dollars to his family and businesses; and in an unspoken alliance (pact, entente, détente) of the first order, kept the nightly news and the cable networks rolling in dough and in the spotlight (as long as they kept yakking about him), despite the fact that younger viewers were in flight to the universe of social media, streaming services, and their smartphones. Thanks to the millions, billions, perhaps trillions of words expended on him by nonstop commentators, pundits, talking heads, retired generals and admirals, former intelligence chiefs, ex-Bush administration officials, and god knows who else that have kept the cable channels churning with Trump on a nearly 24/7 basis, he and his remarkable ego, and his now familiar gestures -- that jut-jawed look, that orange hair, that overly tanned face, that eternally raised voice -- have become the wallpaper of our lives, something close to our reality. If he were an action film, some Hollywood studio would be swooning, because never has a single act gotten such nonstop publicity. We’ve never seen anything like him or it, and yet, strange as the Trump phenomenon may be, if you think about it for a moment, you’ll realize that there’s also something eerily familiar about him, and not just because of The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice.

In a world where so many things deserve our attention and don’t get it, rest assured that this is not about Donald Trump. It really isn’t. (more)

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