The Great Unraveling: The End Times of Donald J. Trump

About Trump's appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists' panel, The Times writes it was "a display of flagrant race-baiting that was egregious even by Mr. Trump’s standards." Need I add, as The Times did, "Trump showed no regret." 

I suppose for a paper of record, such negligible "Now for the rest of the story" insignificances are required. (For those who weren't around at the time, the quote is from Paul Harvey's standard radio lead-in to each "surprise-ending" story that any generally knowledgeable denizen of these here united states would have already been familiar with. But the masses aren't called the "great unwashed" — these days meaning the pitiably uninformed — for nothing.)

Anyone free from a coma over the last 10 years knows Trump never shows regret, no more than a murderous Klansman in a White-rigged trial of the 1950s. Regret is weakness, ignorance is strength. Such is the 1984 motto of 2024's leader of up to 40% of the American electorate, which shows you just how victorious the South was 159 years ago. Its slaveholding aristocracy kept the unwashed White population steeped in Black inferiority so that free White men could have someone to look down on, and as long as they were looking down they couldn't look up and notice the aristocracy was keeping them down as well. This antebellum tradition lived on through Jim Crow and ...

Its leadership today is right where it should be, way down south in Dixie — Mar-a-Lago, home of an aristocratic ignorance that would have made Jefferson Davis proud.  

You can imagine how unsettling it was for the already thin-skinned Donald Trump when a Black woman began belittling His Mightiness, entitled from Day One of his life to the special privileges of money, power, and color. This smallest of men couldn't handle criticism from even expected quarters of political opposition — and now this ... this ... this nobody of a colored woman believes she's entitled to ridicule him in public? Has the world gone mad? 

Well yes it has, but that's neither here nor there when it comes to Donald versus Kamala. The former was inflicted with a preexisting condition of madness, but the latter has sent him into heretofore undiscovered territories of blithering sound and fury, although his combination signifies a lot, not nothing, with regrets to Shakespeare.

Because, as noted, tens of millions of Americans are every bit as crazy as Trump is. They accept his unhinged diatribes as holy manna of gospel. Still, he of usual omniscience has one little problem. He hasn't a clue as to how to attack Kamala while simultaneously attracting the votes of voters who aren't already crazy. What's more, it would be entirely out of character for Trump to speak sanely, plus that would only cost him the currently locked-in Crazy vote.       

Thus "Trump has responded with one unforced error after another while struggling to land on an effective and consistent argument against her," notes The Times. With that, his little problem is restated. Effective arguments apply only to the above-cited crowd and consistent is a trisyllabic word whose meaning is lost on the scatterbrained mind of Trump.. 

So this is what he came up with over the weekend, something evidently heisted from this Twitter fan with three-quarters-of-a-million followers:        

BREAKING REPORT: Harris campaign BUSTED using FAKE crowd photo at campaign rally stop.. pic.twitter.com/HjTjN7vCdz

— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) August 10, 2024

Now that's a story, and "Scoop" Donald jumped on it. "Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she “A.I.’d” it, and showed a massive 'crowd' of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!" he scribbled in a Truth Social rage. He also wrote that her fakery "disqualified" her from the presidential race — a thought he put in print just in case there's anyone left who hasn't realized he is absolutely bonkers.  

But wouldn't you know it? There's this thing called "smart phones" and they have video capability, which someone present at Harris' airport greeting took advantage of. 

FALSE❌️
Your still shot is from the camera being zoomed way in, making the crowd look like it's close to the plane when it isn't. pic.twitter.com/Fxq79BltYn

— 𝐫𝐞𝐏𝐫𝐨-𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡 (@ProTruth4Life) August 10, 2024

Well damn. That was a letdown. And it came from such a reliable source, that Chuck fellow, who elsewhere posted: "SHOCK REPORT: Tim Walz embedded in shocking scandal that involves the murd*r of a young girl." I don't know about you, but I sense some bias in Chuck's reporting.

I saw no correction update on Trump's Truth Social about Kamala's empty tarmac, a "shock report" in itself, I know. Trump soon salved his wound by posting instead that she "is starting to get hammered in the polls." At least that was consistent. He also went off — and at much greater length — on Kamala having stolen his non-taxable tips proposal. In fact Twitter's entire right-wing mob went off on it. Was not the fake video story a much bigger story, though? And yet it vanished from Truth Social.   

It seems at a recent fundraising dinner for wealthy donors that Trump described himself as "angry" because they "had first tried to bankrupt him and then to kill him." I'm surprised only by his emotional self-awareness. Angry he is, calling Kamala "nasty" on "Fox & Friends" and a "bitch" in private, for now.

But his anger "has left him susceptible to manipulation, even among close allies," writes The Times — like when, at the behest of a Miriam Adelson super PAC competitor, he "fire[d] off a series of angry text messages" to her in his own name, complaining that her PAC was full of "RINOS." Observes The Times: "At the time, [Adelson's fund] was spending nearly $18 million on a week’s worth of ads aiding Mr. Trump in three battleground states."

That type of behavior transcends madness and lands smack dab in the thick of stupidity — extraordinary stupidity that nevertheless is just one acre of his "heretofore undiscovered territories of blithering sound and fury," to quote myself. (I find myself almost frightfully agreeable most times.) 

The Times story errs on one point. It relates, "Also unsettling to him: For the first time in Mr. Trump’s political life, his opponent has received more sustained news coverage than he has." The adverb also seems to have sneaked into that sentence. I can think of nothing more infuriating to Trump than an enemy receiving more free media than he. Perhaps I err as well, and "also" is used only as a complement to his fury over a Black woman beating the crap out of him — and with graceful humor, the most powerful of all political haymakers.  

Before it slips from my mind there is one other consistency that the Republican nominee still cherishes. "Trump told one aide that Democrats were trying to 'steal' the election again from him" by substituting Harris for Biden, as though that's some sort of theft. Whatever. Among the most unprofitable of endeavors is questioning hy a stupid madman would say what he said.

This post is now officially running into the way-too-long category, in part because I've quoted The Times and I didn't intend to after my opening. A quote leads to a thought, and that to another, and another, and before I know it I have in excess of a 1,000 words on cyberpaper, an internet-readership killer. And so I'll do what I should have done 700 words back: post this briefest of commentary in relation to The Great Unraveling. It could be we've seen little of Trump's nervous breakdown compared to what he'll do after this development. It's from the Financial Times, published yesterday.

[A] survey, conducted for the Financial Times and the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, is the first monthly poll to show the Democratic presidential candidate leading Trump on the economy since it began tracking voter sentiment on the issue nearly a year ago.

Forty-two per cent of voters said they trusted Harris more to handle the economy, compared to 41 per cent who said they put their faith in Trump. 

I would not want to be the aide who shows this to Trump. 

Comments

[Anne J]

Can you imagine how much of a lead she would have now if more people were better informed? I sometimes wonder if Trump supporters are organically stupid or simply willfully ignorant.

[VoiceOfReason]

Potato...potahto, Anne