I can't recall how it came about, but while clicking around and writing this morning I ran across an Election Day 2018 item of mine. It addressed "A horrifying encounter with online Russian drivel," and secondarily one Nicholas Sampsidis, writing for an ultraconservative site called The Duran. More on Sampsidis' Russian drivel, also on Election Day 2018, in a moment. First I must ease you in to his somehow comically grotesque psyche.
In October of last year he scribbled a downright hilarious piece titled "The Trump Miracle and the Logical End of US Democracy: What happened?" A few tastes: "Obama’s, [sic] Grand Canyon [divisiveness] was cemented, subsequently, by Clinton’s 'Deplorables' gaff [sic — a gaffe in a gaffe!]" … "the Obama-Clinton regime politicized that which should never be politicized, namely, core beliefs and values, starting with God" — which in conspicuous truth originated with Falwell Republicans, and pretty much needless to say, the "Obama-Clinton regime" did no such thing afterward … "Debate is one thing, but the [Obama] regime followed up with direct and indirect actions, which some writers call rainbow fascism" … and these two passages, of which I am fondest: It's a damn shame we lost "compassion and sensitivity to opposing views," followed up by Hillary "flying about on her crooked broom, peddling influence and laundering bloody cash from terrorism-sponsoring sheiks."
Poor Sampsidis. He doesn't know his adorable knockabout ass from the hole in his head.
Now on to his Election Day 2018 drivel (See Russian; subsection Putin) in "The America I Once Knew," in which "anything was better, in my day" — such as potentially deadly measles — "even a school bus ride home. A mama’s boy was a sissy who wouldn’t get even an eyebrow of interest from the girls." Also see: homophobia.
In the end, however, Sampsidis morphs uncommonly spooky, since, he needs us to know, "democracy … has failed because of the intolerance of Obama and Clinton for any views but their own." I'm still working on that particular incoherence, though he may have just hastened its unintelligibility in a propagandistic fever, so as to get on with what he really wanted to say:
"A dictatorship can be a more effective form of government for business considering that the dictator is free to enact legislation without the restraints of Congress. If the economy is good, foreign wars aren’t needed. Finally, the dictator is above money, considering that, he or she, is in power for life, so it’s not necessary to steal from coffers or to stash away bribes for a rainy day."
Right, except a dictatorship can also summarily shut down your business or subsidize your competitors; except after lamenting the failure of democracy, he makes clear he prefers the extermination of any congressional restraints on some Stalinist goon; except that dictatorships are exceptionally free to launch and maintain foreign wars when their economies are headed north, south, east or west; and except that dictatorships throughout history have been notorious for stealing from coffers and stashing away bribes — consult "rules 5, 6 and 7" of Peter York's "Dictator Chic." Other than these trivial objections, you sure nailed this one, Nicholas.
He concludes by going altogether bananas:
"The US is about to become either a benign dictatorship of the right or a radical dictatorship of the left. It’s up to Trump and his supporters to recognize the fact and to seize the opportunity while it’s still possible."
Does anyone believe this ghastly buffoon of primordial mind won't be inciting riots when Trump crashes in 2020?