Wednesday, December 9, 2015

The Dilemma Facing the GOP, or....?

Donald Trump, facing a barrage of criticism from other Republicans over his "ban all Muslims" comment, is once again threatening to take his bat and ball and go start his own game. Apparently, to Trump, being "treated fairly" means "saying nice things about his bigotry."

Which puts the GOP in a bit of a bind: Do they continue to pile on Trump and push him out, taking the risk that he will pull a Perot and effectively hand the presidency to the Democrats? Or do they tolerate, nay, embrace Trump's rhetoric, hope that he will flame out and that a significant percentage of the electorate won't punish the GOP for their eagerness to include a fascist?

Now here's a crazy twist: What if the Trump candidacy has been a case of a ratfucking that has spun out of control?

Trump conceivably could have gotten into the race to both boost his standing as a conservative commentator and to pressure the other candidates to say things that could be used against them by Hillary Clinton. He got a lot of mileage and publicity out of his birtherism, maybe he was hoping to build on that to boost his visibility. It's been pretty clear that The Donald has, for most of his career, followed the old saying: "I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right." He'd get a lot of free publicity, his friend Hillary would have ammunition for the general election, it'd be a win-win for him.

Only now, it's out of control. In a quest to stay at the top of the polls, Trump has been saying more and more things that are batshit crazy: Forcibly deport over ten million people. Build a wall along the Mexican border and make the Mexicans pay for it. Register all Muslims. Keep all Muslims, even American citizens, from entering the country. He's approved of the detainment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. He's drawn parallels between his idea of banning Muslims from FDR's refusing to admit Jewish refugees during the war (effectively sending them to death at the hands of the Germans).

He's gone crazier and crazier, picking up speed like a massive avalanche of insanity-fueled racism. It'd eventually going to damage his brand; people may end up as eager to stay at a Trump property as they would to stay at the Tojo Hotel and Casino.

Avalanches eventually run out of steam. But they can leave a lot of damage behind. The Trumpalanche will likely bury him. It may bury the GOP for a long time. And there is a non-zero chance that it could bury the country.

2 comments:

  1. To be fair (and I DON'T want trump as Prez) he said that we should stop moslem immigration until the Feds get their shit together.

    Which should, actually, be true of all immigrants.

    Vet them carefully before letting them into out country. ALL OF 'EM.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Vet" all tourists, business travellers, possibly even foreign diplomats???
    That's no less crazy.

    In the end, he used a religion as identifier to discriminate against a group of people, and that's been a no-go in Western civilization for a long time already.

    Moreover, he's implying that religion is the problem, not the fact that a small percentage of every country's population are dangerous idiots.

    And the proposal is ineffective anyway. Most Muslims couldn't be dentified as such even if they travel with their real papers (the permission to deny being a follower of Mohammed when facing discrimination for it is part of Islamic doctrine), and even the no-fly list would fail in face of fabricated papers or someone using teh real papers of a similar-looking person who's never been to the U.S..

    All thsi discrimination against Muslim stuff could never be "reliable", and thus could never be effective against the errorists.

    ReplyDelete

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