The August Day Mark Twain Met Donald Trump

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Even though Pap lusts mostly for liquor and Huck’s loot, a treasure trove back then of $6,000 that today wouldn’t cover Trump’s barber bills, he shares the billionaire’s braggadocio, the propensity for noise, surly resentments and irrational lashings out, especially at minorities.

A good substance-free rant is just Pap and Trump’s style: “Then the old man got to cussing,” Huck recounts, “and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn’t skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn’t know the names of, and so called them what’s-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing.”

Derisively, Pap says, “Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment [sic], wonderful,” and then explodes at the notion of an educated, free black man. “They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? …I says I’ll never vote agin. Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me — I’ll never vote agin as long as I live.”

Many Republicans fear Trump’s possible nomination, “increasingly concerned that [his] inflammatory language is damaging the party,” Jonathan Martin wrote in The New York Times, “…that his remarks are hardening the tone of other candidates on racial issues in ways that could repel the voters they need to take back the White House.” Yet if another GOP candidate wins their nod instead, those same Republicans fear that Trump’s voters will stay at home, just like Pap. It is a wretched bed they have made for themselves this last 50 years, a legacy of mongering and misinformation, and with the unlikely Trump of New York, instead of someone from the Deep Red South, the Republicans have managed to achieve a destructive apotheosis of dog whistles and hatred.

“Such is the human race,” Twain wrote back in 1907. “Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.” Prescient indeed.

http://billmoyers.com/2015/09/10/mark-twain-met-donald-trump/

[Demeter]

1. Mark Twain saw it all

and he lost everything before he died. He was a embittered by the loss of his children and wife.

But his eye was keen, and his sarcasm finely honed. He was a remarkable reporter on the ground. The Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of the 19th century.

[Frustratedlady]

2. I have to agree with you. His dry sense of humor said more in a few words...

than great writers of the day. I love going back over some of his writings, even today.