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Still Stunned
I hoped taking a day’s break from the debate would provide some much needed impetus for creative writing. It hasn’t. I’m disgusted, had enough and tired of it all. The debate offended everyone’s intellect, especially those who actually know things. Both candidates made profoundly idiotic and patently false statements. While each raced toward the bottom they jettisoned whatever dignity was left of the American electoral process. Furthermore, their sycophants continue to insult our intelligence by proclaiming what our lying ears and eyes didn’t hear and see.
Note to the travel weary, fast-food inhaling surrogates who have sold their souls to the devil who pays most: Who the hell do you think you are? Your candidate dishonored themselves and their party and appears to be preaching to their lowest hanging pliable demographics.
The Left’s perpetual shrillness, childish victicrat-ization, and incredulity for those who refuse to bow to their superiority makes me ill.
The Right has no soul, no courage, no idea who they are anymore, and is assured of internal infighting well beyond the election which makes me ill.
The first election where I paid attention was as a fresh-off-the-boat British kid in junior high. Four years from the bicentennial, Reagan/Carter/Anderson felt historic in the moment. There was excitement and overall honor. Of course there was bickering and sniping, as with every election going back 200 years. But there was dignity. Americans, no matter their politics, had a gleam in their eye knowing they were pulling the lever for a decent man.
Flash forward 36 years and we have a despicable and impulsive P.T. Barnum with thinner skin than the caviar dolloped atop his chalupa who’s running against a despicable and unlikable compulsive liar whose only public office achievement in three decades was legalizing corruption.
Embarrassed while watching this with my kids, I’m beginning to no longer care. So, instead of writing about who won or lost the debate, here’s all I can muster:
Hillary lost.
Trump lost.
America IS lost.
Published in General
It’s amazing… I think it here and you type it there. I don’t know how you do that, David. It’s a little scary.
This election is the result, not the cause, of our problems as a nation.
Twenty years ago I was looking for a book about Churchill in the very large and beautiful library of my local community college (it’s an excellent school that attracts a great deal of private investment because it’s the only college on Cape Cod). I had to go to the second floor (accessed by a truly elegant spiral staircase!) to find the history section. The second floor was devoted to the sciences and history only. When I looked at the “history” shelves, I saw two floor-to-ceiling bookcase sections taken up completely with feminism and racism books. I would say these sections represented something like 40 to 50 percent of all of the history books in that library. I couldn’t get the image out of my head for weeks.
Our country needs an intellectual overhaul.
But don’t give up. We have the minds in some of our conservative universities to do just that.
This is a blip. It’s not the end. :)
I find your venom invigorating, David! I don’t think that’s a good thing, though. But it’s nice to see both sides being condemned. The candidates and their retinue should all be embarrassed. Like that’s going to happen. That was my first and last debate of the season. I’m moving on. Sigh.
Heh, heh. One candidate is “Damned if we do” and the other is “Damned if we don’t.”
I don’t remember it that way. That was my first election and I remember it being weary and frightening at the same time. Carter’s malaise followed him and all of us like the dust on Peanuts’ Pig-Pen. Reagan was exciting and new but I didn’t feel assured, not yet. Only in retrospect, to be honest, did Reagan’s revolution seem like more of an inflection point than a burp. And Anderson was just confusing.
If I work really hard at optimism, my thinking goes like this: They are both bad and slightly-less-bad is small consolation when my side has lost. But it hasn’t lost everything until it loses everything. I will do what I can to support down-ticket conservatives in the election and then when the survivors emerge, they will continue to receive support, encouraging them to do what is right. There are ways to shut the new president’s worst inclinations down and we must encourage that boldness everywhere we can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c
I think the question is how do we change the culture, a tall order given that the left now controls what Lenin called the ‘commanding heights’ of our country- the universities, the media, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the government bureaucracies and the public schools. A more worrisome problem is the left’s increasing demonisation of dissent, as left-wing ideology is increasingly treated as a kind of secular fundamentalism, a sort of secular ISIS.
Compare JFK (whatever his personal life was like) to today. A while ago I put up a post about JFK’s 1962 speech to the New York Economics Club advocating tax cuts: http://ricochet.com/331193/jfk-speech-on-tax-cuts-to-economic-club-of-new-york/ There was only one comment, but it was eloquent and very striking, and reflects the last line of the OP-
“TeamA,
What an incredible difference. A little wry joke about values to start it off and then he delivers his view of the situation, his plan of action, the parameters which he considers critical. No bombast, no manipulation, no threats. Rather the assumption that we are all pushing for the same result. All of the cards are on the table.
An adult speaking to adults. What have we become?”
Regards,
Jim
Genius.
Sorry David. On behalf of America, I apologize. You see, we just cannot help it. Trump is America. By the way, Obama is America also. Hillary too.
Remember one thing . Trump has not called his fellow Americans racists, deplorable, bitter clingers, wacko birds, Hitler, mysogynists, homophobes, islamophobes and lacking in heart.
Nor are they the 47%.
I challenge the basic decency of the people who did utter those words. Those words have been uttered for decades to describe a large number of Americans with the megaphone of the media and the smiling complicity of our political class.
Sorry if they are tired of it. They may be impolite and rude. Their messenger may be flawed. But he does not insult them.
Agree with every word you wrote.
Agreed. As far as 1980 I recall a teacher vocally afraid of Reagan. She discussed the zero factor (curse of Tippecanoe) which was a theory that each President elected in a year divisible by 20 was either assassinated or died. She mentioned it after Reagan won with a little hope in her voice. Little did she know only months later Hinkley would make a name for himself.
Agreed and well said.
Bravo, Dave
Spot on. We once watched our leaders with admiration. Then amusement. Now disgust.
TKC, I wanted him to nail it. For the first 20 minutes I thought he did well, but whether due to Hillary’s mental jujitsu, or his lack of preparation he was oblivious to the several pitched softballs cross the plate. Instead he stammered, repeated unnecessary gobbledygook and infuriated conservatives. He was bad, but she wasn’t better. She repeated her numerous proven lies, never admitted her failures and came across smarmy. If not coughing or keeling over means she was successful, then there’s that. Both were just… gross.
I want her to lose more than I want him to win. If he’s serious about winning, he better dig deep, find some humility and crack the books stat.
If he loses momentum in the polls, you have a point. I happen to feel larger issues are in play. We shall see.
He is still the one not insulting the voters.
Verbal insults, no. That’s correct. However, he’s insulting us with his lack of preparation. Most of us watched the debate screaming at their TV’s with things he should have said. Whatever one thinks of Hillary, she took Trump seriously enough to bunker down and learn her lines. Why can’t he do the same?
I spent a large part of my life around sales guys. Trump profiles as a sales guy. No less smart, but their skills are not in close quarter debate.
Yes, he did not attack when offered, but he held his own against a moderator-Hillary tag team. Round 1 of three. No sense doing a knockout in the first round, you do all three anyway.
My expectations were lower. He avoided beating up grandma on television. That was her killshot. He would have lost the election on that one. Now Hillary has to be vertical for two more debates.
My experience with every debate I’ve ever watched. Put me in the camp that doesn’t see Trump as uniquely bad, compared to the other Republican candidates I’ve seen.
I agree with you about Trump. He’s a size-the-situation-up-quickly type of guy.
A good friend of mine is a stockbroker and is about Trump’s age. My friend has three televisions and two radios going all the time. He skims headlines.
But so are most Americans these days. We have become a nation of headline readers. Our attention span is clocking out at eight seconds.
What did you say again?
Remember this guy David? Same guy.
Of course he was unprepared, he doesn’t know anything. How could he possibly prepare from a starting point of nearly total ignorance?
He’ll always flail the longer each debate goes because that simply allows for more opportunity to display his cluelessness. Is it an accident that he avoided primary debates once the field was whittled down? Those debates started to hurt him once the stage had only four contenders -though obviously not enough to overcome his lead- with fewer it would have gone worse.
I completely agree but “stunned”? Were you expecting better from these two?
I remember feeling bigly positive about the first Romney/Obama debate.
Susan, if the sweet meteor of death is barrelling toward us I wouldn’t know how to not watch. Help me. Please.
They always leave opportunities on the table.
Yeah, he’s great at sizzle, but what about the actual steak (not Trump’s). Are you convinced he isn’t just a great salesman?
Actually yes. Forgive me for the having the probably unrealistic romantic ideal that a person as close to the ultimate power as these two should carry themselves accordingly.
I had high hopes too. Is it bad that they involved Hillary collapsing in a heap while foaming at the mouth?
I don’t think he’s ignorant. Whatever one thinks of him, you don’t become a billionaire easily. I just think he has a very hard time listening to other people.