James Wolcott: Donald Trump isn’t “the new normal”—he’s the new abnormal

[kpete]

DONALD TRUMP HAS TOTALLY UPENDED CONSERVATIVE MEDIA, AND IT’S BEAUTIFUL
Yes, the presidential nominee has divided America like no one else, but there is a silver lining: the implosion of Fox News and the G.O.P. tribal wars it’s brought with it.
BY JAMES WOLCOTTNOVEMBER 2016

http://media.vanityfair.com/photos/57f66edac666a0c056e7d0d0/master/w_450,c_limit/wolcott-elephant-rampage.jpg
No man, woman, or set of cloven hooves has done more to bring Americans apart than Donald J. Trump, he who would be emperor. Trump is the Great Divider, the polarizer with a power saw for a mouth. He has sliced the Republican Party asunder, his brand of bellicose, invective-spiked, minority-trashing, proudly ignorant populism more than most country-club, Chamber of Commerce Republicans can swallow at cocktail hour. His hulking usurpation has blotted out even the near past. Only four years ago Mitt Romney was the G.O.P. presidential nominee, and already he looks like an oil painting from mellow antiquity. Romney has not endorsed Trump for president, nor have primary rivals Jeb Bush (his former-president brother and noble father are other non-supporters) and John Kasich, whose campaigns followed traditional themes and metrics and were crushed like paper planes in King Kong’s paws. The Republican Party that these business suits respected, propped up, papered over, and platitudinized is no more. And it’s not coming back, even if Trump loses in a mudslide. Politically, Donald Trump isn’t “the new normal”—he’s the new abnormal, the plus-size genie that broke the bottle.

But let’s look on the bright side, since bright sides are becoming harder to find. Perhaps Trump’s greatest act of division is the tribal war he’s triggered in the conservative media. Bitter fratricide has broken out between the pro-Trump zealots and the anti-Trump stalwarts, pitting talk-radio gasbag against gasbag, pundit against pundit, blogger against blogger, online trolls against byliners. I cannot tell you how much joy this has given me. “Schadenfreude” doesn’t begin to cover it. I keep hoping that it will escalate into the local-news teams’ free-for-all rumble in Anchorman, with George F. Will spearing Bill O’Reilly with a trident—that is my dream for America. If Trump belly-flops on Election Day in bitter defeat, costing Republicans the Senate, the postmortem could provide the perfect bonfire for roasting marshmallows. Let the recriminations begin! The post-Trump conservative landscape will be a charred, feudal battlefield, the survivors fighting for the paltry remains of a party too dumb to live.


MORE:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/10/donald-trump-conservative-media

[Jade Fox]

1. Love Wolcott!

[renate]

2. he is such an excellent writer!

He has such a knack for finding just the right word and putting it in just the right place.

[Jade Fox]

3. kick