The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

What is going on??

 
... dude.

America.

This is hardly the year's most egregious fuckup.

This is hardly the year's most egregious fuckup.

I have to agree with Valeria.  We still don't know if the new Star Wars is gonna be any good.  

But yeah... Trump.  How to explain that?  Well, let's face it.  The current field of GOPher poppies looks pretty bland.  Lightning rod that he is, Trump is "exciting".  Doesn't hurt that the media are making so much of him.  

My prediction: Trump is showboating, he'll bow out when a presidential campaign starts to resemble anything like real work.  Which'll be disappointing.  US politics is absurd theater, and it seems he's the only one who gets it.  

I'm really looking forward to a Sanders/Trump debate.  The potential for hilarity there is unprecedented.  

But if Trump bails like I think he will, 2016 will lose all entertainment value for me.

I have to agree with Valeria.  We still don't know if the new Star Wars is gonna be any good.  

I was sorta talking about the hatecrime wave, not the new Star Wars movie.

Important fuckups.

BAD fuckups.

Also, that movie will rock.

Oh, so totally no.

 
What?

Oh, not you too.

Can *anyone* explain this to me? Are Republicans that far gone, or are they just presidentially suicidal?

This is the end result of Nixon's Southern Strategy -- helped along by the Tea Party driving out all the moderates in the Republican Party. The Republican Party's base -- the people who turn out for the primaries -- tend to be bigots who left (or whose parents left) the Democrat party after the civil rights laws of the Johnson era and Tea Party extremists. Trump has huge appeal to both of these.

He launches his alleged presidential bid by branding Mexican immigrants as "rapists".
He poo-poos the sacrifices of former POW Senator John McCain, saying he prefers his heroes not get captured.
He gives out rival candidate Lindsey Graham's private phone number to the masses.

And he sits on top or near the top of myriad Republican presidential polls.

Can *anyone* explain this to me? Are Republicans that far gone, or are they just presidentially suicidal? Bad enough they've got SIXTEEEN (at last count) declared candidates, incl. not-a-prayer-so-must-be-angling-for-a-VP-slot George Pataki (who?) and household-name-in-his-dreams-only John Kasich...

What is going on??

I didn't know about his existence until last week, but when the Trump campaign published a propaganda poster with Trump and Waffen SS-reenactors on Twitter, it was even reported in European media. What makes the poster so sinister is the text: 'America needs leadership'. If you translate that into German, the entire thing enters the Twilight Zone of Fascism and ridiculousness.

Do you still have the Oath of Allegiance in Northern American schools? The custom always strike me as oddly Fascist when I see it occur on film or TV. Why on earth does a democracy maintain such a strange custom?

Wshington Post says that his remarks only got widespread news coverage on the last day of the polls. And on that final night, there was a significant drop in his ratings. 54% of the Republican party says he does not reflect their views. 62% of Americans say they definitely would not vote for him.

According to CNN, The RNC has tweeted that they definitely have no place in their party for Trump. Per Romney's former advisor, "This [standing against Trump] is their chance to really draw some stark contrasts about the direction of the party".


I'm an Independent voter, btw. I just thought this was some uplifting news about our nation as a whole. And maybe it'd ease your fears a bit. I really don't see Trump going far.

Sorry to pull that uplift back to earth, but here's the latest:

Trump Leads GOP Field, No Slump After Attacks on McCain
http://morningconsult.com/2015/07/trump-leads-gop-field-no-slump-after-attacks-on-mccain/
 
To be clear, I don't think Trump has a snowball's chance in hell of winning the Republican nomination. (We Democrats should be so lucky! It would make our path to the White House a smooth superhighway paved with gold and lined with ever-blooming roses.) It's just startling that the GOP has reached this point, with this loon able to run amok and do the damage he's doing to a major political party.