So we have President-elect Donald Trump - - a year and a half on a national campaign built on insulting women, his fellow candidates, Muslims, Gold Star parents, the enrollees at his fake university, the contractors and employees he cheated, refugees from Syria and immigrants from southern hemisphere nations, African-Americans and the disabled - - preceded by years of dishonestly challenging President Barack Obama's right as American to serve as President of the United States - - so basically living and campaigning and operating his businesses as a consummate bully:
A) Complaining as pure distraction and manipulation on Twitter about his more mature, less demagogic and unoffended running mate Mike Pence being gently urged from the stage after a performance of "Hamilton" to ease the public's post-election fears and to respect American diversity...
B) Further playing to his East Coast-hating base by pretending to be offended again about "Saturday Night Live" and being comedically portrayed by Alec Baldwin - - in the grand tradition of SNL sending up politicians mercilessly across the political spectrum, including Gerald Ford, Mike Dukakis, Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, Bernie Sanders, both George Bushes, Hillary Clinton, even a sight-impaired NYC Mayor David Paterson, et al...
A) Complaining as pure distraction and manipulation on Twitter about his more mature, less demagogic and unoffended running mate Mike Pence being gently urged from the stage after a performance of "Hamilton" to ease the public's post-election fears and to respect American diversity...
B) Further playing to his East Coast-hating base by pretending to be offended again about "Saturday Night Live" and being comedically portrayed by Alec Baldwin - - in the grand tradition of SNL sending up politicians mercilessly across the political spectrum, including Gerald Ford, Mike Dukakis, Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, Bernie Sanders, both George Bushes, Hillary Clinton, even a sight-impaired NYC Mayor David Paterson, et al...
I watched parts of @nbcsnl Saturday Night Live last night. It is a totally one-sided, biased show - nothing funny at all. Equal time for us?- The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behavior
- The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize.
Mr. Spencer’s after-dinner speech began with a polemic against the “mainstream media,” before he briefly paused. “Perhaps we should refer to them in the original German?” he said.
The audience immediately screamed back, “Lügenpresse,” reviving a Nazi-era word that means “lying press."
Mr. Spencer suggested that the news media had been critical of Mr. Trump throughout the campaign in order to protect Jewish interests. He mused about the political commentators who gave Mr. Trump little chance of winning...
Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Spencer said, was “the victory of will,” a phrase that echoed the title of the most famous Nazi-era propaganda film. But Mr. Spencer then mentioned, with a smile, Theodor Herzl, the Zionist leader who advocated a Jewish homeland in Israel, quoting his famous pronouncement, “If we will it, it is no dream...”
...“I do think we have a psychic connection, or you can say a deeper connection, with Donald Trump in a way that we simply do not have with most Republicans.
White identity, he said, is at the core of both the alt-right movement and the Trump movement, even if most voters for Mr. Trump “aren’t willing to articulate it as such.”Where among these examples is there genuine offense and cause for alarm worthy of a President-elect's concern?
The photo of Trump with Obama in the Oval Office was disturbingly reminiscent of a similar photo of Von Hindenberg turning over power to Hitler in 1933. The Weimar elite and German ruling class thought they could "control" Hitler. They did not foresee that he was something quite different until he began dismantling the rule of law, mobilizing racial hatred, and preparing for war. Oh yes, and he started off the campaign to Make Germany Great Again with a big public works program. For further insights read Sheldon Wolin's prescient book Democracy,Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Get ready to fight back.
ReplyDeleteThere is something very wrong with this man when he calls for an apology for requesting that diversity in America be respected!
ReplyDeleteThe theater "must always be a safe place"? Maybe on Planet Trump, but here on Earth, being safe is the last thing good theater is about.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what the Milwaukee Rep was thinking when they scheduled The Foreigner for a November thru December staging, but the impact of seeing the show after the election is staggering. While the farce delivers laughs throughout, it is built on top of the racist hatred of the KKK. After the climatic scene, one of the characters looking at a KKK hooded sheet refers to the clan as "White Sheet Heads". When I have seen the play in past years, the KKK always seemed far away. On Saturday night, the reality felt much closer.
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