Johann Hari: Donald Trump's lunacy reveals core truth about the Republicans

[marmar]

from the Independent UK:




Johann Hari: Donald Trump's lunacy reveals core truth about the Republicans
He is the Republican id - finally entirely unleashed from all restraint and reality

Friday, 29 April 2011


Since the election of Barack Obama, the Republican Party has proved that one of its central intellectual arguments was right all along. It has long claimed that evolution is a myth believed in only by whiny liberals – and it turns out it was on to something. Every six months, the party venerates a new hero, and each time it is somebody further back on the evolutionary scale.

Sarah Palin told cheering rallies that her message to the world was: "We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way!" – but that wasn't enough. So the party found Michele Bachmann, who said darkly it was an "interesting coincidence" that swine flu only breaks out under Democratic presidents, claims the message of The Lion King is "I'm better at what I do because I'm gay", and argues "there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas."

That wasn't enough. I half-expected the next contender to be a lung-fish draped in the Stars and Stripes. But it wasn't anything so sophisticated. Enter stage (far) right Donald Trump, the bewigged billionaire who has filled America with phallic symbols and plastered his name across more surfaces than the average Central Asian dictator. CNN's polling suggests he is the most popular candidate among Republican voters. It's not hard to see why. Trump is every trend in Republican politics over the past 35 years taken to its logical conclusion. He is the Republican id, finally entirely unleashed from all restraint and all reality.

The first trend is towards naked imperialism. On Libya, he says: "I would go in and take the oil... I would take the oil and stop this baby stuff." On Iraq, he says: "We stay there, and we take the oil... In the old days, when you have a war and you win, that nation's yours." It is a view that the world is essentially America's property, inconveniently inhabited by foreigners squatting over oil-fields. Trump says America needs to "stop what's going on in the world. The world is just destroying our country. These other countries are sapping our strength." The US must have full spectrum dominance. In this respect, he is simply an honest George W Bush. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-donald-trumps-lunacy-reveals-core-truth-about-the-republicans-2276222.html

[tularetom]

1. Almost makes you want to see him get elected, just to watch the humiliation

Except when the douchebag goes down, he'll take the country and all of us, with him.

[opihimoimoi]

2. He suffers from a psychotic disorder known as Hubristicitis...craves attention for nefarious reasons