Interesting how what goes round comes round. Donald Trump has always been the architect of his own adversity. That’s been the case since day one. He’s always taken whatever life has handed him and done his best to bastardize and squander it — and then pay people off to cover his tracks.
Along with that, he’s got a positively uncanny ability to project better than the IMAX people do. And what he projects that others are doing are his own dastardly deeds. No writer could create a character like him — except maybe Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut was the genius of improbable characters. Remember this?
Every accusation was just a prediction. pic.twitter.com/ZV5ANfPhRB
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) August 4, 2023
Here’s a video I love. You’ve seen this before. It’s from a show called Daredevil, with Trump’s face superimposed. (bottom clip)
— Chaz 'Neaux Fuxs' Cooper 🏳️🌈🇨🇦 (@ChazReddBear) August 4, 2023
GOP👇👇👇👇🤭🤭 pic.twitter.com/FIGa8r0yrz
— LorellYan (@LorellYan1900) August 4, 2023
He will take down the Republican Party with him. That is are problem they don't care what he does. pic.twitter.com/eRpVkxp2aM
— Jim M (@JimM21364489) August 4, 2023
That’s the part of this story that nobody could predict — although H.L. Mencken came close. He said,
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
Just by the by, those lines were the end of a longer passage, which I share with you here.
“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost… All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
There was a day and age when this commentary was regarded as cynical. But right now, we are at such a place of desperation that it was beyond even Mencken’s imagination. Now that is chilling.
One of my favorite Mencken quotes is “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” There was just the right combination of votes cast and votes that went uncast in 2016 that proved Mencken’s theory of Democracy. There is much to dislike about the man but sometimes one has to admit his arrogance and contempt for average American’s collectively wasn’t simply him being an arrogant, know-it-all a-hole. I think he could accept that more people are genuinely stupid than supremely intelligent. What drove him up the f**cking wall was that he believed overall average Americans possessed a passable intellect. But that most were too lazy to use it to become well-informed on the issues of the day and to look critically at differing viewpoints on them AND think about them before making decisions. Even worse, he knew there were more people out there than most are willing to admit that insist on being willfully ignorant! Hence his contempt for average Americans/voters and politicians too because the rare one who didn’t simply pander to the uninformed & willfully stupid were so greatly outnumbered by those who did.
It was true in his time (as it had been true before) and it has been since.
People all to readily complain about their rights, but no-one ever mentions their responsibilities.
You want rights?
Take the responsibility of being an informed voter seriously.