For Your Enjoyment #38, Race to the White House 2016 Ed. (Part 2)
- DARTH TRUMP (video above)
So this is the state of Ted Cruz less than a week before Super Tuesday. Hated by his party, incapable of getting anyone to like him. The GOP establishment has even made it clear that as much as they hate Trump, they would still prefer him as the party nominee. That alone must be galling to Ted Cruz, who has spent his entire life planning and plotting and gearing up for this run, only to see it swamped by a walking billionaire troll doll who has made a mockery of all the voter-fooling conservative arguments he was counting on to carry the day for him. You might even feel a tinge of sympathy for him, if he wasn’t such a galactically shitty jerk.
- Welp, some things never change - everyone still hates Ted Cruz
Look, all of this speculation can end. All you have to do is say "I am not the Zodiac Killer." What are you hiding [?]
- The Internets just cracks me up sometimes
Trump’s wager was simple: Pretend to be stupid and angry because that’s what stupid and angry people like. He’s held up a mirror to the country, shown us how blind and apish we are. He knew how undiscerning the populace would be, how little they cared about details and facts. In Nevada, for instance, 70 percent of Trump voters said they preferred an “anti-establishment” candidate to one with any “experience in politics.” Essentially, that means they don’t care if he understands how government works or if he has the requisite skills to do the job. It’s a protest vote, born of rage, not deliberation...Debate after debate, speech after speech, Trump has personified the anti-intellectualism percolating in this country for decades. Is there any doubt it’s working? He may be cynical, but he isn’t wrong...The people are getting what they want, and what they want is to have their idiocies and their discontent beamed back at them. Trump is clearly more than a media construction. He’s everything dumb and regressive about our political culture distilled into a single candidate. And he exists only because a sufficient number of Americans want him to – that’s the problem.
What we call right-wing and liberal media in this country are really just two different strategies of the same kind of nihilistic lizard-brain sensationalism. The ideal CNN story is a baby down a well, while the ideal Fox story is probably a baby thrown down a well by a Muslim terrorist or an ACORN activist. Both companies offer the same service, it's just that the Fox version is a little kinkier. It's our fault. We in the media have spent decades turning the news into a consumer business that's basically indistinguishable from selling cheeseburgers or video games. You want bigger margins, you just cram the product full of more fat and sugar and violence and wait for your obese, over-stimulated customer to come waddling forth.
- Has the sensationalism of mainstream media gotten out of control?
There’s no official definition of the “establishment” but it presumably includes all of the people and institutions that have wielded significant power over the American political economy, and are therefore deemed complicit...The establishment doesn’t get that most Americans couldn’t care less about economic growth because for years they’ve got few of its benefits, while suffering most of its burdens in the forms of lost jobs and lower wages. Most people are more concerned about economic security and a fair chance to make it. The establishment doesn’t see what’s happening because it has cut itself off from the lives of most Americans. It also doesn’t wish to understand, because that would mean acknowledging its role in bringing all this on. Yet regardless of the political fates of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the rebellion against the establishment will continue. Eventually, those with significant economic and political power in America will have to either commit to fundamental reform, or relinquish their power.
- Robert Reich optimistically predicts the end of the establishment
Indeed, the uncomfortable truth, for the pundits and fellow Republicans who turned their noses up at Trump, is that his appeal has spread over seven months so far beyond a rabble-rousing, anti-establishment rump to encompass the very elements of the American electorate the GOP has been eager to reach. And while it’s no majority, it’s a bigger group than anything the rest of the fragmented Republican field has galvanized.
- Donald J. Trump's fans aren't all just angry, uneducated white men
"THAT'S the Black Experience? Get the f*ck out of here, Ben Carson. And take your pebble with you."
- Trevor Noah questions Ben Carson: What makes you the arbiter of black?
We — the undersigned artists, musicians, and cultural leaders of America — are excited to endorse a new vision for our country. It’s a vision that pushes for a progressive economic agenda. It’s a vision that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment, and gets big money out of politics. We endorse Bernie Sanders to become the 2016 Democratic Nominee for President of the United States of America.