Charles P. Pierce: Our President* Spent His Saturday Lying to Our Faces

[babylonsister]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a53269/trump-florida-rally-lies/

Our President* Spent His Saturday Lying to Our Faces

Oh, and tomorrow is Presidents' Day.
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By Charles P. Pierce
Feb 19, 2017

snip//

How many more of these whackadoo performance pieces does he have to present before somebody throws sand in the gears? If four Republican senators—say, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse, and Susan Collins—would agree to caucus with the Democrats under Chuck Schumer, the whole thing would grind to a halt until we could catch our breath and see if we really want to live in the madhouse of this president*'s mind for the next four years. Bold speeches in Munich and chest-thumping on Twitter won't cut it. It's put up or shut up time.

And, please, for the love of god, ye editors and news directors throughout the land, enough with the expeditions into the heartland to talk to people who helped bring this down upon themselves and on us. These folks have nothing new to say. They voted their id and their spleen and they're still on a high from that. Some guy in a café in Dubuque wants to say that he voted for this president* because he "tells it like it is," or because he thinks the steel mills are coming back? Can you watch that rally in Florida and believe that these opinions have any real merit?

"You gotta keep his con even after you take him," Henry Gondorff warned. "He can't know that you took him." Until they realize how badly they've been taken, what's the point in all these stories? You're listening to people in love with their own delusions. It's not even magical realism because there's no magic and nothing's real.

The press-bashing bothers me less than it bothers a lot of people, and certainly less than it should bother the likes of David Frum and other career conservatives. Press-bashing has been in the conservative playbook for as long as the power sweep has been in Green Bay's. In 1964, Goldwater delegates tried to climb up into the broadcast positions and throttle anchormen. Nixon and Agnew, of course, were sui generis, but history tells us that President* Trump is little more than a crude evolutionary fluke in this long progress.

It's the other thing—the "fake news" conjuring words—that is really perilous. That is a tactic that breaks down the idea of an educated, informed citizenry that was assumed by the Founders to be the basis of American self-government. Because of that, there are consequences to believing nonsense in this country that are far more serious than they are anywhere else. Couple the delusions in the Heartland with a president* that is more than willing to populate those delusions with monsters from his own id and you no longer have a functioning democratic republic. You have an incompetent, incoherent East Germany, with golden commodes and a $200,000 annual membership fee.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

1. Wise words to a few potentially wise and patriotic Rs.

I forget who also recently noted that the pResident is all id (though, surely he is, at the same time, a super-egomaniac). Maybe Colbert. But rampant, ugly id? That's OK in the similarly unregulated minds of his supporters.

The Rs are mostly OK with the Toddler in Chief, because they apparently lack the moral fiber to stand up to a serious threat to the nation so long as there's a chance they can profit under his reign.

I'll be pleasantly shocked if any of them are willing to sacrifice what they stand to gain in defense of the ideals of democracy they claim to hold so dear as to lay down lives, fortunes, and sacred honor (as long as the lives and fortunes are not their own) to foist it upon other nations.

[winstars]

2. Henry Gondorff, the Paul Newman character in The Sting... Nice reference Mr. Pierce!!!

[mountain grammy]

4. Thank you...

I knew it was Newman, but couldn't remember the movie!

[mcar]

3. K&R

[The Sand Reckoner]

5. The idiotizing of America is not exactly new either

The devaluation and denigration of facts, knowledge, intelligence, education and experience, and the admiration of stupidity really took off with Reagan, and has continued unabated for the last 36 years.