How Donald Trump Successfully Trolled America
Google is arguably the first tool that most people use to inform themselves about presidential candidates and election issues. People often use Google Search to ask political questions, while Google tries to guess the question and complete it while the user is still typing. The AI (artificially intelligent) algorithm Google employs for this feature is keyed to many environmental variables, but the most influential are terms and topics that are trending.
Thus, we come to Donald Trump. These days, people are searching his name often, and one of the most frequent questions they ask appears to be:
Is donald trump a republican or democrat?
The American people just aren't certain.
It's actually quite amusing, in a dark way, that this question is appearing so late in the election game. But I really can't point to a clueless electorate, this time. After all, the Republicans are raging about Donald Trump just as much as the Democrats are. What may be obvious to Sanders and Trump supporters — that the American people are done with being ignored and unrepresented and are moving on — is completely invisible to the Parties, their Pandering Politicans, and their Parasitical Pundits. All of them have spent the past eighteen months in concentrated denial.
It's been a very long time since the Political Establishment Bubble in DC has represented the hopes and desires of the people. The Establishment sees the American people as an annoying inconvenience; the needs of the people are regarded with contempt. Helping the people (rather than the financiers) is seen by the Establishment as a moral hazard. The living experiences of "Real America" disgust them.
So detached are the People from the Establishment (and the faux democracy that games them), the people are not clear which kabuki Donald Trump belongs to — the Republicans or Democrats. Thus, the People turn to Google to help them decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them from 2017, forward.
The important question, here is "Why does the entire establishment fear and hate Donald Trump?" We've been discussing the truth of the matter since at least August 2015. Despite all the moral "outrage" the media has spewed, the basic truth is immutable:
So why is Trump the enemy, really? The GOP will say it’s because he’s a clown, he has no experience, he can't win, he’s more a celebrity than a politician. This might all be true. But there’s another big reason they’d rather not talk about.
At the debate and numerous public appearances, Trump has matter-of-factly stated that he is an equal opportunity donor to Republican and Democratic candidates—not for the purpose of civic duty or altruism, but in exchange for influence. He has openly deemed his gifts to politicians a business expense. He went so far as to declare, before 24 million viewers at the debate, that he uses his donations to obtain favors from legislators who are all too eager to bow to his requests. He not-so-subtly implies that politicians are bought and paid for by him and other financial moguls. And he expects a fair return for those dollars, measured in policy rewards like zoning adjustments, subsidies for building projects and long-term tax relief.
In short, he lets the cat out of the bag about something the political system has spent more than a century to disguise.
Representative democracy can only remain legitimate in the eyes of its citizens if they believe that those who seek and hold public office are independent actors. We have tolerated well-funded lobbying organizations, most of which get their money from rich donors and corporate investments. Hillary Clinton admits she receives huge contributions to her campaign from Wall Street titans. But she adamantly denies that these millions of dollars influence her political decisions.
It is an open secret that the overwhelming majority of U.S. senators and a substantial portion of members of the House of Representatives are rich. In some instances, like Trump, they enter politics as “independently wealthy” candidates. But in many if not most cases their money comes from high-end speakers fees from corporations and their non-profit foundations and institutions. Senators and Congresspeople often participate in insider trading, getting lucrative investment advice from Wall Streeters or congressional financial and economic staffers.
Many of us know all this. Yet we are still asked to hold up the myth that the government should be free of direct influence. Trump shatters this tacit agreement into a million pieces. This kind of honesty has no place in the political marketplace.
In 2016, half (or more) of registered voters will stay home, not due to apathy but because they know that politics is run by big money and their votes will produce more of the same disappointment and ever-diminishing well-being.
Donald Trump has successfully trolled America's deceitful and corrupt political system. And Americans have helped him to do so.
Trump is no saint, but we have to admit that he has tapped into a collective revulsion for politics as usual.
Those who cannot see that the American people are inexorably transcending Party politics, are really not part of the nation's future.
Comments
The anti-vote is real
But it's not your fault.
It's their fault.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
If Hillary and Trump devote all their time
toward fighting each other, a third person might walk in and start talking to the people themselves and walk away with the prize. The Republicans and Democrats both are thinking and talking about a third party. Somebody will probably come up with one.
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
Hey, Pluto! Excellent essay. I got either this,
or a very similar article to my cell phone News Feed yesterday, because I recognize the (Larry) Sabato quote.
He's probably to most folks' right (here), but he's a fair analyst; and, he sure nailed it regarding Trump & FSC being the worst of both worlds/parties.
Have a good one!
Mollie
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."--Helen Keller
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
that is what people draw to Trump
He is honest about it, open and everybody knows it's true. That's so cool, isn't it? And he is rich. So what should be wrong about him? He speaks the truth, get over it. Politics are a spectacle and as long as the bottom line number is huge and black, everything okey, dokey. /s
He's the brat who shouts, "The Emperor is NAKED!" n/t
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Trump isn't lying
and a lot of people other than skin heads find that refreshing.
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
The Court Jester
That plays the clown, but gets away with the truth. (When he's not lying, at least)
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
He was the candidate who called out the Bush Bros Big Lie
that Junior "kept us safe". That big lie was a cancer in our system. It was so obvious, it said "RWNJs have so much power that we can get away with any lie whatsoever" - and it went on without challenge on the big stage for over 10 years.
Of course, his pandering to the bigots and racists is not something we want in a president. In a backhanded way he is doing the nation a favor on this too, since other R candidates merely dog-whistle this stuff and get away with it. Pity Hillary is so far ahead of Bernie, though it's not over till it's over.
I'll just be honest. Trump repulses me big time.
I mean I can't stand the guy. I think he's a phony bullshit artist that doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. He's rich because of his daddy and his sociopathy.
Are the American people waking up to this fraud of a political system? I think sort of. I look back at U.S. history and see a constant stream of people railing against the corrupt and rigged American political and economic system, run by and for the rich, and in ways I don't see anything different than when it was about the Rockefellers, Morgans and Rothschilds. And now their power is so great and their institutions so ingrained someone like Trump won't be able to do shit in the scheme of things no matter how he might fancy his bullshit self.
It's still going to be up to a relatively small percentage of people who can somehow come together with a goal and plan to overcome the Power.
yep.
reagan was a bullshit artist too. both wound up on the ticket because star fuckers wanted them to be. similar star fuckers want to elect clinton.
if this election does anything, it will expose the transparent pathology of our electoral system. the one with more gargle hits is going to be president.
fuck.
GIANT ALL-CAPS SIG
Trump is the only candidate
That actually said the words to Jeb, that your brother lied to us and knew he was lying to get us into Iraq, the biggest foreign policy mistake ever.
I think that Trump and Bernie are both tapping into the we've had it with the party system. Trumps stoking the fear of foreigners and dog whistle racism makes him hard to support. It's been a long time since I studied the populist movement way back so I'm very fuzzy on the details. IRC William Jennings Bryon sounded a lot like Bernie with his cross of gold speech and how the east coast bankers were screwing the hard working Midwest farmers. They also set up a lot of cooperatives cutting out the middlemen. But I also recall the suspicion of foreigners especially from Southern Europe, and the suspicion of intellectuals with the know nothing movement. And then there was the religious crap with the scopes monkey trial. Further research is needed by me to speak more confidently on the details, but clearly the populist agenda sounded great to me and I wrote off the other stuff as just reflecting people's attitudes at the the time.
Today,Let's face it, the majority of Americans fear that Mexicans are taking our jobs, Muslims want to kill us and we don't want black and brown people getting too close to us. We don't like intelligent people as they don't have any common sense and Jesus is the boss, so we can't trust the Jews. I hate that this is so but it seems too true to ignore. Republicans have done their part now by saying it's no longer business as usual. Now it's up to the democrats to say the same thing.
“The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us”
― Voltaire
This writer isn’t pulling any of her punches re ANY candidate:
Obama's Last Gasp Imperialism
When Trump said, in one of the Repub debates,
(as mentioned in a previous comment)
the MSM's hair was on fire to a week or two, LOL!
It is amazing, the lengths that the corporatist MSM is willing to go, to deny reality.
Mollie
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."--Helen Keller
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
“By their fruits” — their actions — “ye shall know them.”
Truth telling is a very, very, very important action.
Good intentions are not going to get much of anywhere if a person is not truth-based.
Other candidates besides Trump — I don’t know what their problem is, but if they can’t tell the truth, if they can’t admit Fact One, then why should I trust them about anything?
Truth has little value in the US.
"As ye exploit the least of my flock, so shall ye profit."
— Conservative Jesus, LLC
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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
nym
I laughed at that, lotlizard. I'm in transportation myself.
For example, what, exactly, is the truth about Syria?
Is the truth about Syria what Seymour Hersh is reporting about the U.S.-constructed “rat line” and the the scheme to frame Assad using sarin gas?
Could, perhaps, the truth about Syria be what the author of the article linked below has to say on the subject?
Demise of the "Progressive Left"
If a candidate isn’t interested in the truth about Syria, or knows the truth but is afraid to cast doubt on the official story — “let’s glue a black hat on Assad” — in public, what good are they? Why should I trust them?
I like truth-telling. I’m not seeing much of it. Demonizing this or that figure more than other figures who lie just as much is, to me, just the latest distraction and smoke screen.
I was just thinking that about Trump. For example his
stance that we got a "bad deal" with Iran. He's said Iran should never have a nuke and that Obama negotiated a bad deal because they'll break it, blah blah. That's all a lie, based on the false narrative that Iran is seeking a nuke and that the U.S. and Israel have the right to prevent them from having one. So Trump is either a dumb shit or he's falling in line with the imperialist/Zionist narrative about Iran. The same with ISIS. He talks about fighting ISIS etc. There is no fight against ISIS, ISIS is the proxy army for the U.S. and others to serve like Al Qaeda. It's all the same bullshit but Trump is either ignorant or has decided to abide by the imperialist narratives. Personally I think he's being fed the false narratives and that's what he's saying in his speeches. I think he's going to be malleable as hell on foreign policy/imperialism and in the end there won't be any difference or at least not enough to matter.
But like you said, what are we talking about? The show will go on that's all we need to know. And what are we going to do about it.
Sometimes I think
that at least some of the 'leaders' in Iran want to get a nuke, if only to keep from being bullied, but this:
is absolutely true.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
I don’t want a Trump and I don’t want a Clinton Democrat.
Looking for movement toward a system and a society that would propel to the fore more figures like Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, Barbara Lee, Ramsey Clark, or the women of CodePink like Ann Wright instead of squelching them and working overtime to make them outcasts.
Just Trump? Nah.
More like, pretty much the entire Western elite is trolls all the way down.
None of the above man.
We can go ahead and vote for Stein and get maybe 3-4 percent if we tried, but it won't mean shit. A boycott won't mean shit either unless we can somehow turn it into a movement against the system. I'm not seeing that forming at all. It's all the same thing relative to working within the system in various ways to seek incremental change.
It's like, "Hey, let's oppose the TPP" Then we'll go save the whales and try to elect more and better politicians.
Running in place.
Heh.
Use duckduckgo. 50 First Dates.
i happen
to believe the nation has been trolled by globalists for the past 24 years by both parties. If a non globalist gets into the WH, TPP dies, TTiP dies ... these are good outcomes but ask any establishment party hack or media hack and they will say it would be horrible... pick what you believe. I already have and will not change my sentiments... no one has provided a legitimate argument for trade agreements in 25 years.. all the other reasons supporting it have been destroyed by the results of the last 24 years ... in the 90's they were saying 2 jobs would be created for every job lost.. has that happened? Only in the unemployment or underemployment lines.
Text of the TTIP was leaked by Greenpeace last week.
It's going to be much worse than anyone realized:
Another Goodbye to Democracy if Transatlantic Partnership is Passed
This horror show along with the TPP was pushed by Hillary around the world while serving as SOS on the American worker's dime. The text of the agreement is utterly depraved.
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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
and we thought the 1% was bad .000001%
the term "off with their heads" is starting to float in my mouth... but I'm not sure if it's figuratively or literally as of yet.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison