12 August 2016

I Love the Orange Man

The GOP is terrified of Donald Trump, as he is exposing their big secret.

A few months ago, I wrote extensively about Nixon's Southern Strategy and how the dog whistle he invented has been useful for the Republican Party. In American politics, dog whistle refers to messages whose racist and sexist undertones can only be heard by the party faithful.

You know, Willie Horton.

Ostensibly it was about furlough policy, but to the GOP voters it was a confirmation of their belief that most African Americans are violent criminals.

The beauty of thinly veiled racism is that when someone objects to it and this is reported, all GOP politicians have to do is to scream about liberal bias in the media. The bias is rubbish of course, but they repeated it so often that everyone believes it. Including the journalists.

This way, they stoke their racist constituencies and get them to vote in greater numbers. At the same time, they shut up any potential criticism of their institutionalized racism and sexism.

This is what Trump has been doing, except he is not using dog whistle. Everyone knows what he says and what he means. It is out in the open.

This is how he outdid all his rivals during the primaries. They were all as bigoted as The Donald, if not more, but they continued to hide behind images and vague references.

Not the Orange Man.

If they talked about the dangers of, wink-wink, nudge-nudge "Islamist terrorism," he called all Muslims terrorists, offered to block the entry of all people of that faith and to register and put under surveillance those already inside.

If they mentioned illegal immigration, he called all Mexicans in America killers, rapists and criminals and suggested to kick them all out and build a wall to prevent them ever coming back.

There are literally hundreds of examples. Which brings me to the contract he put out on Hillary Clinton a couple of days ago.

The GOP has been attacking Hillary Clinton with every imaginable crime, including murder, theft, and corruption. Whitewater took a full decade of relentless investigation to only find a stained blue dress. But their conclusion was not that there was no crime but rather, as a super villain, she covered up her crimes too well.

The latest is the Republican Congress' obsession with the Benghazi incident. The investigated it many times and despite their best efforts they came up with nothing. Yet, throughout their Convention they chanted "lock her up" on every occasion.

But The Donald outdid them again.

He sais this a couple of days ago
 "Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks.

"But the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know." 
It is crystal clear that he is not talking about voting. It is a contract. Shoot her, he says.

And I am sure there are literally millions of right wing nut cases who would kill her gleefully if they thought they could get away with it.

The party establishment is mortified. They are fine with the sentiment, they don't want it said out loud.  Here is an example how they normally proceed.

A retired navy captain who support Trump said this about the Gold Star family incident:
“He should have kept his mouth shut, and the Democratic Party should not have stood Mr. Khan up and let him do that,” Mr. Farnan said. Of Mr. Trump’s reaction, Mr. Farnan said: “I’d have much more appreciated it if he just said, ‘We’re thankful for your son’s service. We’re thankful for you as parents for raising him and bringing him to our country, and that’s wonderful.’”
Think about it for a second. He is not saying Trump was wrong. In fact, the only culprit is the Democratic Party for giving those unsavory Muslims a platform. No, it was just that Trump should have kept his mouth shut and should never have said what he and the rest of the Republicans were thinking.

That was the Republican way and this is what Trump altered completely.

What is worse for the leadership is the fact that he says all these outrageous things and no one is turning away. Far from it, he cruised through the primaries and destroyed well funded rivals with great name recognition like Jeb Bush. His rallies attract tens of thousands of people. And in May, when he finally started fund raising in earnest, in one month he raised $51 million. Tellingly, 94 percent of that amount consisted of donations under $200.

Thanks to Trump's Tourette syndrome, everyone can see that, after decades of watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh and other wingnuts, the Republican electorate is largely an angry, ignorant, racist and sexist mob.

There is no hiding that fact anymore.

Do you want visual proof?

When the BBC reported the "shoot her" speech, they added a clip of a man, "who assumed a look of disbelief" they said.

Except, it is not a look of disapproval or dismayed shock. The man is surprised but he is not turned off. And the woman he looks at is laughing encouragingly.



It is at the beginning of the clip, go ahead and look at it yourself. That is the bearded man with gray hair on the right side of the screen. He is well aware that such notions are not to be stated this clearly. That is the disbelief part.

But he is clearly giddy. In case you don't feel like watching video, this is the freeze frame one second after "wow, did he just say that?" moment.



See the beaming expression.

They love the Orange Man.

And because of that, so do I.

Now everyone knows who the Republicans are.

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