Barack Obama has come back to the political scene and he’s finally willing to say all the things a lot of us were hoping he wood. During a speech he gave to the University of Illinois, he talked about the state of political discourse, and finally was willing to call out Trump by name. I can applaud his decision up until now to try and stay above the fray, but right now especially, his voice is an important one in remind the country, and indeed the world, in who we were before things got where they are. That’s not to say they weren’t heading that way during his time as POTUS. Indeed, I would argue that Trump’s victory was the culmination of years divisiveness finally exploding into what we have. But listening to Obama’s measured, thought out words reminded me and many that we’re supposed to be better. And maybe gave me hope that we can be. Because maybe it is time to make America great again, but not by building walls to keep away the other. But by building bridges to extend a hand outward. He also reminded us all that it just shouldn’t be that hard to say Nazis are bad.
Donald Trump, Jr. is a true to life comedy movie villain. Very specifically, he’s the douchey guy with slick backed hair, who thinks he’s clever, suave and charming (usually without actually being any of those things), and he’s always pushing around the little guy with a doofy grin on his face. You get the feeling he’s pushed around a lot of employees at ski resorts. So when Don Jr. attempts to wax intellectual on basically anything, there is usually a little bit of humor to be found. Don Jr. isn’t exactly a Rhodes Scholar, and frequently says ludicrously unfounded things based on other equally unfounded things he’s read on the internet. This week, while at a movie premiere (a movie made by recent Trump pardonee, Dinesh D’Souza) Don Jr. claimed that based on history (history, he added, as only truly informed people such as himself are aware), it’s really the Democrats who are more Nazi like, not his father and his administration! Now, any reasonable person looking into political similarities between modern day politics and the Nazi regime will be able to find the answer to that question, because as it turns out, while an often contested and argued academic field, it’s not a terribly secretive one. And if you want to find out exactly what the Nazis stood for, you can find the Program of the German Workers Party, written by Adolf Hitler in 1920, in all it’s glorious text. I encourage you to take a look at it sometime and see whose views are more closely mirrored by a German despot.
The frustrating thing about Donald Trump’s base at this point is that there is literally nothing he can do or say that they won’t either try to explain away or rationalize about why it’s not so bad. Trump’s base is now pro-Putin, where even 3 years ago, such an idea would have been disgusting to them. Trump gets to be racist, screw over our farmers and factories, roll back regulations to protect the environment and people, and any negative reaction to that gets relegated to liberals overreacting or misunderstanding the issue and fake news. The deep level of entrenchment is worrying and makes you wonder how they found themselves there. How much of it is out of spite? Are those of us who wholesale condemned those who voted for Trump in the first place responsible for this behavior? Even in part? I don’t know the answer, but it certainly makes me think about what it takes to put someone in that place. Could it happen on the opposite side of the spectrum somewhere down the line?
So Donald Trump thinks he’s the best thing since the Beatles, but everyone knows this. It’s basically his slogan to the world. He’s the best, he’s a genius, a man among men and every woman’s dream. And he wants everyone else to share in on that enthusiasm he has for himself. In an interview he gave during his time in the UK, Trump proclaimed himself the most popular Republican of all time, more popular than even Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator himself. Now there are a few things wrong in that statement, which should make you feel better if find yourself screaming in anger at your computer screen. First off, no one knows what he’s basing that statement on. There was a recent poll that suggested that among about 88% Republicans, he’s pretty popular right now. But that certainly doesn’t make him the most popular Republican in history. In fact, most Republican presidents since the age of polling began have been as popular and more during their time. Secondly, and this is a big one, Abraham Lincoln didn’t live in an era of polling. We have no numbers at all to indicate what the consensus of him was during his time, and I can assure you, during our time? He’s basically considered a superhero. There is an actual blockbuster film centered on the premise of Lincoln being a superhero monster hunter. The fact is, I feel fairly confident that there is only one group of people in Trump’s “base” that would consider him more popular than Lincoln, and I have to wonder, is that where he’s getting his information?
The GOP seems to have a Nazi problem. Seriously. At least 3 congressional GOP candidates have openly admitted to being white supremacists with Nazi and neo-Nazi sympathies. There was a period of time when finding that kind of information out would have been something to end a political career. It feels like several giant leaps backward that it’s being used to kickstart them. To their credit, the mainstream Republican party does see this as an inconvenience. They’ve been doing their level best to keep their image away from that ideology, and disavowing these upstarts openly, but it’s still unfortunate to note that these candidates seem to be gaining momentum rather than stalling out. But what happens when these outliers become less abnormal?
Mind the Exit 