So the new look in Conservative Patriotism is memorabilia with a slogan that says “I’d Rather Be A Russian than Democrat”. You’ll see these t-shirts floating around Trump rallies and GOP conventions. You see, it’s the next great message in making America great again. It shows how far Conservatism has come. You see, 2 years ago, the GOP considered Russia a hostile foreign power. They bashed liberals over the head with even the whiff of a notion of being soft on Russia and Vladimir Putin. But then suddenly, the winds changed, Putin was a wonderful leader, and Russia should be reached out to. Russia stopped being the enemy, and people with opposing political values took their place. “I’d Rather Be A Russian than Democrat” is the slogan of our country’s political divide, perfectly encapsulating this near civil war mentality between ideologies. And yet for all of that, I can’t find where these pieces of memorabilia first originated. Several vendors are putting them out, but for all the research that I’ve done, I don’t know who came up with it. But I can imagine Donald Trump might be kind of tickled by this. It shows how effective his sales pitch has been.
Trump again suggested to the whole wide world that he’s the most popular Republican of all time according to some “poll”. Which poll is a total mystery, and his claims on top of that are equally bizarre. He’s still claiming that he’s even more popular in the polls than Abraham Lincoln. Now, I’ve said this before, but it’s actually IMPOSSIBLE for him to know that. There were no real polling system in Lincoln’s time. Also what is he comparing that to? His popularity at the time? Because yeah, he presided over a war and basically altered the fabric of the economy by emancipating a race of people, in a time when Racism was still the normal thing. But Trump won’t be bothered to clear anything up. He did suggest in his tweet that perhaps someone should check the numbers because this assessment couldn’t possibly be right, and to that, I think we ALL agree. Mind you, if you check those numbers and decide there is nothing even remotely truthful about that statement, good luck not being called “fake news”.
Jason Spencer is a Georgia State Representative in the Georgia House of Representatives. A highly conservative Republican, he has a bit of a history in saying some provocative things. No doubt knowing that Spencer had some pretty deplorable views, Sacha Baron Cohen, the man responsible for getting famous celebrities and political figures to expose their most base views as characters like Borat, Ali G, and Bruno, brought him onto his newest show to hopefully provoke an intense reaction out of Spencer. In the bit, thinking he was involved in a training video by an Israeli soldier, Spencer gleefully exposed his rump while shouting racial and homophobic epithets. Now, Spencer is claiming he was stricken by fear due to a previous exposure to terrorism and felt uncomfortable shouting those words…but if you watch the segment, that look of unadulterated joy at saying disgusting and bigoted phrases in a space he thought was going to be an echo chamber is hard to miss. Now, obviously he wasn’t the only person taken in by Cohen and his act. And indeed, many of the more conservative people Cohen has featured while in character, have loudly proclaimed that he tricked them into saying such unsavory and terrible things.
But the fact is that if your gut reaction to someone encouraging you to say something racist or homophobic is anything other than something along the lines of “No, I would not feel comfortable with that,” than you kind of lose your right to complain about someone showing the world your willingness to do such things.
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?
Sarah Huckabee Sanders claims that if the Senators don’t know what the President wants in terms of a deal, then it’s on them for not paying close enough attention. By all indications, the President of the United States has the temperament of a two year old, but with less ability to reason. We know that Schumer offered Trump basically everything he could have hoped for in a deal, and it still wasn’t enough, so honestly, the idea that people just couldn’t pick up what Trump was putting down seems at least a little far fetched.
Mind the Exit 