The chaos of the 2016 US presidential election “is an embarrassment to our country”,John Kerry

[malaise]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/27/john-kerry-presidential-campaign-embarrassment-cruz-trump
<snip>
Secretary of state says world leaders are ‘shocked’ as Republican candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump defend plans to combat terror and focus on Muslims

The chaos of the 2016 US presidential election “is an embarrassment to our country”, secretary of state John Kerry said on Sunday, as he reflected on the candidates’ anti-Muslim sentiment and world leaders’ growing concern.

Asked about what he hears from leaders abroad regarding the US election, Kerry told CBS’s Face the Nation: “I think it’s fair to say that they’re shocked.

“It upsets people’s sense of equilibrium about our steadiness, about our reliability,” Kerry said. “And to some degree I must say to you, some of the questions, the way they’re posed to me, it’s clear to me that what’s happening is an embarrassment to our country.”

Kerry did not specify which candidates or remarks had embarrassed the US, but he was clearly alluding to controversial proposals from the Republican candidates.

[RKP5637]

1. The republicans are making this country look like a bunch of lunatics trying to run the asylum!

[world wide wally]

2. There are ^

[Califonz]

3. Oh great.

Now we have to be ashamed, not only of the government we currently live under, but of governments we might live under?

[0rganism]

4. true, but it represents the end of some rather pernicious illusions

this hateful ressentiment, these feelings that Trump and Cruz tap into for their support base, it's not new. it has been with us all along, but now it is unmasked and unashamed to stand naked in the sunlight, waving its tiny hands in exuberant greeting for all the world to see.

yes, it is embarrassing, but only in the sense that we should have dealt with it sooner, instead of sweeping it under the furniture in the name of comfortable delusion and manufactured consent. we have navigated carefully around it for far too long, now we have the chance to face it head-on and hand it a rousing democratic (small d) Defeat (big D). certainly, as a result, we face a crisis in confidence overseas, but it accompanies an unparalleled opportunity for us to absolutely demolish racism and xenophobia as motivating political forces for a generation to come.

this is the beginning of the last battle of the American Civil War, and it is the battle for America's soul.

[malaise]

5. Good post but I think electing Obama twice

led to the racists crawling out.

[0rganism]

6. absolutely, electing Obama twice is like a continuous ongoing slap in the face to the racists

imagine, you're a socially conservative white supremacist, and every day for the last 7 years you've woken up to president Barack Hussein Obama in the Whitehouse doing presidential things (and doing them fairly well, i might add). if he'd somehow been a massive fuck-up at the job, that would have been some consolation, but no, he's done okay and will probably leave office unimpeached. no, for these folks, the last seven years and 2 presidential elections have been a direct wide-scale repudiation of their core belief system. more than anything else, they "needed" someone to carry their banner, to tell them that president Obama was actually illegitimate, something more than the standard Fox News "Democrats are bad mmkay?" messaging, and who came forward to pick up that flag? Trump.

"He can't legally be president because he's a Kenyan Muslim." never mind that the "Muslim" part is actually irrelevant to questions of eligibility, it was very important to the support base Trump was assembling. that's delegitimization by both heritage and religious belief, very important stuff. and now the people who were soothed by Trump's preposterous Birther "investigation", whether or not they openly declared themselves "Birthers", have come to rally around the colors of racism and xenophobia.

on the one hand, this looks like their best opportunity for a real "Win".

but on the other, they face an electoral smackdown so overwhelming the Republicans themselves are tempted to shatter their own political coalition built up over 40+ years rather than ride their train to its inevitable last stop. by assembling openly, they present a force that can and must be confronted directly. no longer dispersed invisibly throughout the Republican party, the ex-Dixiecrats and their ideological descendants have put their cards on the table and stand up to represent their ... values. and it is through this unified act of assembly that their ideology can be confronted and ultimately rejected by a democratic society.

[malaise]

7. Yep

You nailed it

[bemildred]

8. +1. nt