Theses on Trump 16
This essay is going to need some substantial (though obviously not total) revision, and keeping the original in circulation feels wrong. A revised version will appear in the generally available edition of Neoreaction a Basilisk that will come out in 2017.
October 25, 2016 @ 1:44 pm
Well-done steaks? That does it, he’s lost my vote.
October 25, 2016 @ 9:19 pm
History’s greatest monster. (I get my steak black and blue, but I will reserve judgment as far as medium rare. Anything more cooked than that and you’re basically saying you don’t like steak.)
October 25, 2016 @ 11:29 pm
Speaking of “history’s greatest monster”, the bit I found funniest was “Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, and Jimmy Carter”.
That’s bad, right?
October 27, 2016 @ 12:45 pm
Probably, but it’s my favorite joke in the piece too.
October 25, 2016 @ 1:54 pm
So…the woman with the baby got close enough to look right into his eyes and see what’s in there? Is that what’s happening in that picture?
October 25, 2016 @ 2:35 pm
“ficta turrim non satis est”
October 25, 2016 @ 7:06 pm
I’ve a great deal of thoughts come to mind immediately; though it is occasionally hard to follow the throughline, I think this is certainly among the best work you’ve done since Eruditorum ended, Mr. Sandifer.
It really is remarkable the cocktail of bizarre and horrid things that have gone into creating this monstrosity of a political campaign, which I suppose goes to prove that though the endgoal, of white-hot xenophobic hatred and dickishness is often the same as has been reached in many other cultures and conditions, its the specifics of the situation that make the narrative. The Universality isn’t the interesting part, but rather the diachronic method via which Donald Trump came to bluster and bully his way to the end of one of the more mythologized political processes in recent history at the very least, only to find that he could not bullshit any further.
Great piece, is what I meant to say.
#
Oh, and to connect on the Bush connection as noted in 22 in particular, if Trump had won this year, it would be the first time since 1928 that a Republican ticket not containing Nixon or a Bush had won the presidency. Admittedly, it’s a small sample pool, but it still reflects something grotesquely and secretly incestous in the Republican Party’s frail yet firm grasp on American Power.
I’m not quite certain this says anything further on the matter though, except for this: one may look at the Republican Party’s Presidential Candidates as representatives both of the fealty to petty issues of race and conservative tradition that the base has seemingly demanded for decades, and to a broader, more secular small r-republican ideal, and one may note that without a Bush or a Nixon at hand, none seem able to fully master both realities without either losing the base or losing the secular mainstreamness. The last few failed candidacies are exercises in this paradoxical representation, and have both been duds in their attempts.
Trump then, tries to simply forget about those high-minded secular ideals ( which always rung a little false or at least a little unrelated to the real, material world most voters lived in) and has consumed himself wholly to the worst instincts of the base the Republicans have fed to become an uncontrollable fire.
In that sense, I suppose Trump is understandable.
October 28, 2016 @ 3:02 pm
Since 1928? You seem to have forgotten two Eisenhauer administrations. Other than that, good comment.
October 28, 2016 @ 3:07 pm
Oops, I meant to say Eisenhower (not the original German spelling).
October 28, 2016 @ 3:12 pm
You seem to have forgotten who Eisenhower’s VP was.
October 25, 2016 @ 7:06 pm
This is fucking brilliant. Great work.
October 25, 2016 @ 7:18 pm
One of your best.
October 25, 2016 @ 8:45 pm
Thank you, Phil. There have been endless think-pieces on the effectiveness of the Trump campaign, yet relatively few on the man himself except for “he’s a barbarian”. In treating him like an actual human being, you’ve simultaneously created the most understandable and most scathing portrait of the madman. I am really excited for the Eruditorum book on Season 10, assuming of course that Moffat takes the time to address Brexit and Trump.
October 25, 2016 @ 11:27 pm
I can’t help but praise this in the manner of Trump:
This is incredible, the best, you won’t believe how great this thing you wrote is.
Also, just wanted to share some Trump based psychogeography (with the understanding that I’m probably not using the term correctly) from my bus ride home:
Two hollowed out storefronts that have been abandoned for over a decade sitting next to each other both with huge Trump 2016 banners covering them and then two blocks down a house with a Trump pinata in the window with the word BEWARE above it.
October 26, 2016 @ 7:37 am
And also he has small hands.
October 26, 2016 @ 12:29 pm
This might be the first time I’ve read a blog entry and thought “I would watch a movie based on this post.”
I’m serious. Political biography as psychological horror. David Lynch, get on this!
October 26, 2016 @ 4:21 pm
Ruined orgasm fetish: your version of the alt-right’s “cuck”?
October 26, 2016 @ 6:53 pm
I thought that was Paradise Towers in the first picture for a second. Actually, Trump as Kroagnon is a bit close for comfort.
October 27, 2016 @ 2:42 pm
You know, this is the second one of these Neoreaction A Basilisk entries that ends in a sex joke. Third, if you push the blind all-seeing eye to it’s furthest implications.
October 27, 2016 @ 3:07 pm
What was the first?
October 27, 2016 @ 7:39 pm
“Bioterrorist, infect thyself.”
October 27, 2016 @ 7:47 pm
That’s a sex joke?
You’ve got a dirty mind, Sean.
October 28, 2016 @ 3:02 am
It is in the context of the section it pops up in, otherwise Tom Ewing’s joke wouldn’t work as well as it does.
October 27, 2016 @ 3:24 pm
Trump lying.
Trump telling the truth.
See above.
October 28, 2016 @ 1:30 am
I’m fairly certain Trump got into a dick-measuring contest with Marco Rubio during the primary in hopes of turning the general election into the only contest he could possibly hope to beat Hillary Clinton in.
November 6, 2016 @ 2:49 am
“The presence of people like Peter Thiel making large, late contributions to him long after it’s clear he’s a lost cause suggest that elements of the alt-right are playing the long game.”
Yes, this exactly. It would be nice to think that Trumpism will not outlast the man himself, but the salient fact about Barry Goldwater turned out not to be that he lost a presidential election quite badly. The new guard in the GOP comprehensively out-hustled and out-organized the Bush/Romney/Kaisch axis (and there turned out to be not enough actual born-again christians to give Cruz a shot), and there is a lot of money behind them: Thiel is the most notorious funder, but he’s far from alone. After the dust from 2016 has settled, they might fall apart, but more likely they will settle in to the quiet, ugly business of consolidating power and re-writing the party’s rules to their advantage.
November 9, 2016 @ 11:46 am
I guess now we are all cumming.
November 9, 2016 @ 10:25 pm
One does not “vote” for or against the Tower. It is not a thing one “desires”, or a thing one can will to prevent.
It can, however, oftentimes be a thing we need.