How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable (Taibbi - Rolling Stone)

[cyberswede]

Dear god.

How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable
He's no ordinary con man. He's way above average — and the American political system is his easiest mark ever

he first thing you notice at Donald Trump's rallies is the confidence. Amateur psychologists have wishfully diagnosed him from afar as insecure, but in person the notion seems absurd.

Donald Trump, insecure? We should all have such problems.

{snip}

What's he got to be insecure about? The American electoral system is opening before him like a flower.

In person, you can't miss it: The same way Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house, Donald on the stump can see his future. The pundits don't want to admit it, but it's sitting there in plain view, 12 moves ahead, like a chess game already won:

President Donald Trump.

A thousand ridiculous accidents needed to happen in the unlikeliest of sequences for it to be possible, but absent a dramatic turn of events – an early primary catastrophe, Mike Bloomberg ego-crashing the race, etc. – this boorish, monosyllabic TV tyrant with the attention span of an Xbox-playing 11-year-old really is set to lay waste to the most impenetrable oligarchy the Western world ever devised.

It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-20160224#ixzz416lKVrKt

[SummerSnow]

1. Damn, so so true.

[randr]

2. Time to start mailing the nude pictures of our possible "first lady"

to every Republican congressional office.

[closeupready]

10. I'm sorry, but how will that hurt Trump?

We live in an era with Republican boast that their women are "hotter" than Democratic women.

'Pretty'-ness never hurt ANY woman in a Republican contest.

[randr]

11. my guess is that the majority of American's will not believe anything until

it is plastered right in their faces and spread across the evening news. When in a mud slinging contest best to grab all the mud at hand and start slingin.

[DCBob]

3. The Repub establishment hate this guy even more that we do.. if that's possible.

I think they are behind closed doors now trying to come up with a scheme to get rid of this guy.. or perhaps a third party run with a candidate of their choice. For sure they are not going quietly and let this dude take over "their" party.

[cyberswede]

4. A third party candidate will guarantee a Democratic victory, though

...and it will piss off a large number of R voters. I don't see how they can pull that off.

[snooper2]

5. Everybody should read this, Matt is a sharp man- Oh

and I fucking KNEW there was something about it!

I'f said it all the time, I just want to smack Cruz's face when I see it- It has bee researched! LOL


"The unwelcome attention seemed to scare Cruz back into scripted-bot mode, where he's a less-than-enthralling presence. Cruz in person is almost physically repellent. Psychology Today even ran an article by a neurology professor named Dr. Richard Cytowic about the peculiarly off-putting qualities of Cruz's face.

He used a German term, backpfeifengesicht, literally "a face in need of a good punch," to describe Cruz. This may be overstating things a little. Cruz certainly has an odd face – it looks like someone sewed pieces of a waterlogged Reagan mask together at gunpoint – but it's his tone more than anything that gets you. He speaks slowly and loudly and in the most histrionic language possible, as if he's certain you're too stupid to grasp that he is for freedom.



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-20160224#ixzz4172tdes7
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

[cyberswede]

7. I think "backpfeifengesicht" should become as common in our lexicon as "schadenfreude"

That excerpt above is freakin' awesome.

[snooper2]

8. Yeah, but think of Trump vs Hillary, he would cream her

"As with everything else, Trump personalizes this, making his stories of buying Hillary's presence at his wedding a part of his stump speech. A race against Hillary Clinton in the general, if it happens, will be a pitch right in Trump's wheelhouse – and if Bill Clinton is complaining about the "vicious" attacks by the campaign of pathological nice guy Bernie Sanders, it's hard to imagine what will happen once they get hit by the Trumpdozer."


I'm starting to think Bernie is our only hope.... Trump would do to Hillary what he did to Jeb...over, and over and over and over


Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-20160224#ixzz4174PJZTT
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

[cyberswede]

9. I agree.

Sanders just needs to keep telling the truth as he has for decades. The consistency of his message his strength, imo. And Trump pretty much embodies all the problems associated with the 1% - on steroids.

[phantom power]

6. "Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star. It doesn't know how to turn the cameras off..."

Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star. It doesn't know how to turn the cameras off, even when it's filming its own demise.

The problem, of course, is that Trump is crazy. He's like every other corporate tyrant in that his solution to most things follows the logic of Stalin: no person, no problem. You're fired! Except as president he'd have other people-removing options, all of which he likes: torture, mass deportations, the banning of 23 percent of the Earth's population from entering the United States, etc.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-20160224

[Tommy_Carcetti]

12. Every good con is built around a small nugget of truth.

Otherwise, it fails from the very beginning. Suckering people in is the key.

Reading Taibbi's piece, it appears at a certain point he's almost taking an admirable view of Trump and how he's managed to identify certain problems that are upsetting to many Americans--the influence of money in the political system, the way the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies manipulate the system, the long record of failures within the Republican establishment. These are not imaginary issues we're faced with. These are very real, and Trump--in his own, simple minded way--has managed to identify them in order to reel us in for the con.

Of course, Taibbi's a smart guy and I don't think he's actually praising Trump in any of this.

And the thing about Trump is, he'll identify certain problems, but has been mum on actual solutions. The only actual concrete proposal the man has made in the seven months he's been running for President is building a border fence and having Mexico pay for it. And that's a ridiculous, far fetched proposal.

Everything else Trump has spoken about--other than his poll numbers, and the people he knows and the projects he's done--is intentionally left vague. He says he doesn't like the ACA and wants to replace it. (With what?) He says he doesn't like Common Core and wants to replace it. (With what?) He talks about how he'll negotiate on this or bring the best minds to that, but hasn't offered a single detail of who will help him or what he'll do.

Why? Because he's Donald Trump, and he's a con man.

He's not running for President because he actually wants to fix a broken political system full of moneyed influence (indeed, he's benefited from that sort of relationship all his life). He's not running for President because he's a covert agent trying to help the Clintons or destroy the Republican Party. He's not running for President because he thinks it will be a challenge and he's up for that challenge.

He's running for President because his Cluster B, Narcissistic Personality Disorder affected brain has an insatiable appetite for attention, and running for President and being the President will--without a doubt--ensure that he will continue to receive that sort of attention.

He's trying to con you for completely, unabashedly selfish purposes, and he'll exploit certain elements of truth in attempting to snare you. It's up to us to realize that rejecting him and his con does not mean rejecting those truths.